Qualitative Research: Ethical Considerations

Ethical aspects include perspectives of subject protection and conducting research based on ethical standards. This chapter aims to highlight the ethical aspects of qualitative research, with particular emphasis on content analysis. The chapter begins by presenting four ethical principles—autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice—that were first brought to attention by Beauchamp and Childress (Principles of biomedical ethics. Oxford University Press, New York, 2013). These principles form the basis for the protection of the subject in qualitative research. Next, Shamoon and Resnik’s (Responsible conduct of research. Oxford University Press, New York, 2015) principles for responsible research conduct are described. The ethical framework presented by Emanuel et al. (J Infect Dis 189:930–937, 2000; JAMA 283:2701–2711, 2004), which includes eight ethical requirements, is then introduced, and later used to explore the ethical aspects of content analysis based on an example of qualitative research. The chapter concludes by discussing several challenges that researchers may face when applying content analysis to qualitative research.