Procedural ethics for social science research: Introducing the Research Ethics Governance dataset

Abstract

Conflict research is rife with ethical issues, and the field is increasingly reflecting on how to best address these. Recent debates in political science have mainly focused on ethics in practice, leaving questions of procedural ethics to the side. But procedural ethics are important: they are increasingly required across all areas of research, they are the bedrock of institutional approaches to regulating ethics, and they shape ideas about what constitutes ethical research practice. This article introduces the Research Ethics Governance dataset, the first globally comprehensive dataset of national-level ethics regulations. The dataset provides a picture of the status of research ethics regulations and how they pertain to conflict research. While 87% of countries have requirements for ethical review, only 25% extend those regulations to the social sciences. Of countries with no evidence of requirements, nearly half are classed as fragile or conflict-affected states. The data will be useful for scholars concerned with questions of research ethics, as well as those seeking to study the politics of this regulatory structure and its implications for knowledge production.