Research Responsibility Agreement: a tool to support ethical research

Abstract

When engaging in community-based research, it is important to consider ethical research practices throughout the project. While current research practices require many investigators to obtain approval from an ethics review board before starting a project, more is required to ensure that ethical principles are applied once the investigations begin and after the investigations are complete. In response to this concern, as expressed by workers at a feminist non-profit during a community placement, we developed a tool to foster both greater ethical and feminist research practice in community-based research. Using feminist theories, methodologies, and concepts such as epistemic justice, epistemic trust, and coauthorship, a tool was developed to support researchers and other collaborators in building relationships of reciprocity. This tool, called the Research Responsibility Agreement (RRA) invites all members of a research project to explicitly reflect on their role in the research, their relationships with other collaborators, their responsibility to contributing meaningfully in the project, and their plans to remain accountable to one another. In doing so, the RRA adds to existing tools that support ethical research by sharing explicit reflections from all collaborators on how to prevent harm and by asking them to reflect on ethical practices beyond the initial stages of the project. The RRA also encourages greater engagement from researchers and collaborators toward building meaningful relationships with each other, and with participants, to work together in advancing social change. As a practical tool that promotes reflection, that builds relationships, and that holds all parties accountable to ethical and feminist research practices, the RRA has the potential to generate impactful change in community-based research projects and beyond. While the RRA is tailored to community-based research, it can be applied widely to any research project and has the potential to revolutionize how research relationships are built across disciplines.

In order to engage in ethical research, many procedures have been implemented to guide researchers and to protect participants. One of the most significant steps to ensuring a project will proceed ethically is consulting an ethics board, applying for review, receiving their recommendations, and obtaining their approval (or favorable opinion) to conduct the project. While these steps encourage researchers to reflect on ethical principles during the project’s conception, there continues to be a lack of reciprocity between researchers, their participants, and other collaborators during the investigation and after it is complete. Notably, during a community placement with a feminist non-profit organization, we worked alongside staff members who expressed their concerns about this issue. Some of the barriers experienced by these workers when involved in research included a lack of communication, a lack of follow-up, and a lack of reciprocity from researchers. These staff members wanted to collaborate more to protect participants and to advance social change. With this goal in mind, staff voiced the need for a tool that applies both feminist and ethical research principles to hold investigators and collaborators responsible for building relationships of reciprocity where each member mutually contributes to and benefits from the research.

To respond to this need, the Research Responsibility Agreement (RRA) was developed (see Appendix 1). In what follows, we describe how the RRA was created, how it adds to existing tools supporting ethical research, and how it facilitates feminist theories and methodologies in a way that encourages ethical and reciprocal research relationships. In our section on Theoretical Underpinnings, we explore principles of feminist research, we address concerns around epistemic injustice in research, we consider the problem of “speaking for others” as described by Linda Alcoff, and we discuss the application of Richa Nagar’s “coauthorship” to help foster mutuality using the RRA (Alcoff, 1991; Nagar, 2014). As we posit in this article, the RRA is designed to expand on existing tools by using these principles to keep researchers and collaborators accountable in fostering meaningful, respectful, and reciprocal relationships during all stages of a research project. In other words, the RRA helps to ensure that ethical research practices extend beyond ethics approval and encourages firm commitments from all parties to generate greater social change. While the tool was originally developed to address the needs of a feminist non-profit organization, the RRA is applicable to research in any field of study.

Ethics: Research ethics approval was not required for this piece as it was created in response to an internal quality assurance initiative at a non-profit organization.

Background

The following section provides insight into the creation of the RRA and addresses the reasons for its inception and dissemination. Through a graduate level course on community engagement, we were connected with a feminist non-profit organization where we acted as student collaborators and assisted them with a project. The goal of this partnership was for representatives and mentors from the non-profit, alongside the student collaborators, to develop and execute a project which would support the organization’s needs. After reflecting on these needs, we co-developed a project to assess the non-profit’s engagement with research projects and to identify challenges in their research processes. The ultimate goal of this internal initiative was to develop tools to assist staff members in participating in more meaningful, ethical, and feminist research. Since this project was an internal quality assurance initiative, and we worked alongside staff members toward a mutual goal, the organization determined that formal ethics approval would not be required and that internal ethics processes would be implemented.

With the above plan in place, we began exploring the organization’s research practices. Particularly, we met with staff individually to discuss how the non-profit organization participates in research, how staff members contribute to research projects, and how they experience challenges with their current research practices. To guide these informal discussions, general questions were developed collaboratively. To ensure ethical conduct, we initiated each discussion by sharing our intent to better understand internal research processes and to work with staff members toward improving the organization’s research engagement. Also, we obtained informed consent from staff members to participate in the discussion and to record the discussion. The recordings were saved on a password-protected computer, and we took notes of common themes appearing in the transcripts while proactively removing identifiable information. Once these notes were saved, all recordings were permanently deleted. In addition to these discussions, we reviewed research requests sent by external researchers that were received by a particular program at the non-profit over the last 5 years. All information gathered from this exploration was de-identified. The result of these initiatives illustrated common themes and challenges in the organization’s engagement with research. We obtained consent from all staff members to share a summary of these themes as described below:

1. Wanting to Collaborate: The non-profit organization wants to be an invested partner in supporting meaningful and ethical research projects to support the populations they serve. Staff want to do more than provide researchers access to participants.

2. Needing a Practical Tool: Staff would like a tool that supports responsible, ethical, and meaningful research. The organization wants to create better working relationships with external researchers and to avoid parachute research as much as possible.

3. Prioritizing Care: Caring for clients remains the number one priority for staff. Staff want to address accessibility, informed consent, and mitigate the risk of triggering situations for participants. Preventing harm for clients who want to participate in research should be a team effort between the non-profit, the participants, and the researchers.

4. Implementing Change: As an organization, they are often the last to know about research findings specific to the demographics they serve and the researchers do not outline a plan for implementing findings. Most often, the non-profit doesn’t hear back about research findings at all. The non-profit staff are well-situated to initiate social change from research findings, but they cannot do this without receiving the findings or a plan for implementing evidence-based change.

Based on the challenges shared, we co-developed a set of procedures with staff members for the non-profit organization to employ when engaging in research projects. Particularly, we were moved to develop a tool to help staff negotiate more meaningful relationships with researchers. This tool, later called the RRA, received an extremely positive response from the non-profit organization. It was upon the organization’s encouragement that we considered creating a version of the RRA that could be shared widely with adjacent non-profits and researchers. Since then, the RRA has been expanded to become useful for any research partner who is invested in creating strong relationships and in taking responsibility to ensure their research supports meaningful change. This includes research from a wide variety of disciplines such as Health Sciences, Social Sciences, and humanities, to name a few.

Overall, our collaboration with the non-profit provided the rationale for creating the RRA as a tool that supports ethical and feminist research engagements. We hope that sharing the RRA beyond the boundaries of its original inception will support others who are struggling to engage in meaningful research projects and that it will generate enhanced reciprocity, responsibility, accountability, and dedication to implementing positive social change in research.

Literature review: Tools for ethical research practice

While the RRA was originally created for a specific non-profit in accordance with their needs, we chose to widen its scope to create a version for public use. To further contextualize the RRA within current literature, a sample of existing tools for establishing ethical research relationships was reviewed. We searched all databases available at the Queen’s University library using key terms such as “ethic*,” “research,” “tool,” and “agreement.” Among the results, 12 potential matches were identified by title relevance and abstract details. These articles were reviewed and four contained tools comparable to the RRA. In this section, we examine the following tools: the Partnership Assessment Toolkit (PAT), the Structured Ethical Reflection (SER) grid, the Research Protocol Ethics Assessment Tool (RePEAT), and the Societal Readiness (SR) Thinking Tool. Lastly, we consider the limitations of writing reflexivity statements, a practice now encouraged by many academic disciplines. By identifying the strengths and weaknesses of these tools and practices in supporting reciprocal research relationships, we reflect on how the RRA distinguishes itself from existing guidelines.

To begin, the PAT was a resource established to help assess the strength of research partnerships in global health research (Afsana et al., 2009: 14). Considering the challenges in establishing sustainable and equitable global research partnerships, the PAT was developed to address the risks of asymmetrical power relations between research partners (Afsana et al., 2009: 8). The PAT is a practical multiple-choice and short-answer checklist that applies principles of mutuality, responsibility, collaboration, transparency, equity, and sustainability in assessing partnerships during a project’s inception, implementation, dissemination and after its completion (Afsana et al., 2009: 9–14). Considering the PAT’s goal of fostering mutual research partnerships across all stages of research, its foundation is similar to the RRA. However, the PAT does not apply feminist methodologies such as requiring research partners to engage in reflexivity to identify the impact of their own positionality. Also, while the PAT was developed to support research partnerships, it does not consider reciprocity toward research participants nor the communities impacted by the research. Finally, the PAT gestures toward the importance of signing an agreement between partners, but the tool itself does not facilitate this activity like the RRA does to generate accountability.

Next, we examined the SER grid, which was developed to support ethical decision-making in research. Brydon-Miller et al. (2015) explore how this tool can be applied in action research by demonstrating how it exemplifies “the basic tenets of feminist, communitarian, and virtue ethics” (p. 598). Notably, they provide examples to demonstrate how the SER grid can be used to identify values important to the ethics of the research project and to plan how these values will be upheld during each stage of the research (Brydon-Miller et al., 2015: 599). While this simple tool provides the opportunity to apply values of ethical research, including feminist ones, and to plan how these values will inform the research, the SER does not engage multiple research partners in its creation and implementation. Also, the ability of the SER to address power structures, mutuality, reciprocity, accountability, or other values fundamental to the RRA depends on the values selected by the individual completing the SER activity. Thus, while the SER provides a useful opportunity for individual reflection on ethical principles in research, we found that it does not support the creation of feminist and ethical research relationships.

Finally, we reviewed the RePEAT checklist and the SR Thinking Tool, which prompt researchers to reflect on ethical principles and practices at each stage of the research process. Namely, the RePEAT is a self-assessment tool that helps researchers implement ethically important elements in their work (Roberts, 1999: 1007). Even though this checklist prompts researchers to reflect on their knowledge of ethics, the multiple-choice format limits reflection and their ability to expand on their commitments to ethical research practice. Moreover, the RePEAT questions focus on the researcher, rather than engaging research partners to build feminist and ethical relationships. Similarly, the SR Thinking tool is an online resource supporting researchers in “anticipating and reflecting on social and ethical dimensions of research” (Bernstein et al., 2022: 2). This interactive tool implements reflection by asking researchers to answer questions around responsibility, partnership, societal change, community engagement, and relationship-building (New Horizon, 2019). Although this tool does not directly incorporate feminist principles or personal reflexivity, we found that it was strong in prompting ethical reflection. However, the SR Thinking tool does not require engagement of multiple collaborators in completing the activity, nor does it generate an agreement between partners to implement accountability to the plans outlined.

In exploring these existing tools for ethical research practice, and identifying one or more gaps in each, we found that there is a need for a tool that incorporates feminist principles and that engages all research partners in explicitly reflecting on their own positionality, responsibilities, contributions, and commitments to building reciprocal research relationships. While many academic disciplines or ethics review processes may encourage researchers to reflect on their positionality, or their application of ethical procedures, reflexivity is not traditionally considered an ethical practice (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004: 273). However, in their piece “Ethics, Reflexivity, and “Ethically Important Moments” in Research,” Guillemin and Gillam (2004) argue that reflexivity should be applied as an ethical tool to bridge the gap between the researcher and their work and, that reflexivity should be an “ongoing process that saturates every stage of the research” (p. 274). Thus, reflexivity must be employed beyond traditional reflexivity statements to become an active process of ethical reflection. To apply reflexivity in this manner, we have constructed the RRA to prompt all research partners to explicitly reflect on their own positionality as it relates to the research project and how they can mitigate potential harms emanating from their social locations. Further, the RRA invites all partners to think about how they can contribute reciprocally to each other’s goals. By making their reflections explicit, the RRA supports research partners in committing to one another and to being accountable to their ethical practices. Then, by asking all parties to return to the RRA at key milestones of the project and to sign the agreement, the RRA becomes a living tool that generates accountability toward ethical, feminist, and reciprocal relationships.

Theoretical underpinnings of the RRA

The following feminist theories and methodologies were used to establish the format of the RRA, the questions it asks, and its intended use. Feminist values are at the core of the RRA, underlining the need for such a tool to support feminist research relationships.

Feminist research principles

The RRA is one way of applying feminist research methodologies in practice. Feminist research methods can vary depending on the discipline or the field of research. However, there are some theoretical underpinnings that define a feminist approach and these have been applied to the conception of the RRA. Notably, Tallbear (2014) defines feminist research as that which involves “analysis and critique in a manner that ‘cares for the subject’” (p. 3). By this definition, the goal of feminist research is not the ultimate publication of research findings, but rather that the investigation is done in service of progressing and caring for the research subject. Hesse-Biber (2014) adds that “feminists bob and weave their threads of understanding, listening to the experiences of “the other/s” as legitimate knowledge” (p. 4). In other words, feminist researchers orient themselves in their research and they build relationships of solidarity with communities to give them voice. By combining Tallbear and Hesse-Biber’s descriptions, feminist research can be understood as an approach to inquiry that prioritizes the needs of the research subject and that brings their concerns to the forefront of epistemic investigation.

There is considerable value in using feminist research methods to uphold the ethics of knowledge production and to improve the quality of that knowledge by expanding the perspective from which knowledge is produced. In fact, feminist research requires a reflexive lens to situate the researchers in relation to their research subject. Without reflexivity, researchers can fall prey to what Haraway (1988) calls the “God trick” where the researcher “pretends to offer a vision that is from everywhere and nowhere, equally and fully,” claiming ultimate objectivity (p. 584). However, research is not performed from nowhere; feminist researchers know that empirical methodologies are not free from personal perspectives (Hesse-Biber, 2012: 21). Hesse-Biber (2014) adds that “by disclosing their values, attitudes, and biases in their approaches to particular research questions and by engaging in strong reflexivity throughout the research process, feminist researchers can actually improve the objectivity of research” (p. 12). In fact, researchers should reflect upon their biases and consider intersectional and situated knowledges as central to ethical research practice. Considering how feminists prioritize caring for research subjects and building relationships with them, the findings from feminist research are stronger for having been informed by the subjects themselves. Given the above support for feminist research methodologies, the RRA functions to uphold reflexivity and care as central principals of ethical and feminist research.

Next, when exploring the relationship between investigators and research participants, Tallbear (2014) describes a Feminist-Indigenous approach to inquiry as going “beyond the politics of ‘giving back’ to ‘standing with’” (p. 4). To support the relational nature of feminist research practices, the RRA fosters relationships between three central parties: participants, researchers, and third-party collaborators and it asks each party to be responsible to one another. However, it is important to note that participants already contribute to researchers and collaborators by supplying the data that informs the research. Therefore, the RRA provides a space for researchers and collaborators to reflect on how they can be responsible to each other and to participants. Emphasizing the importance of relationality and reciprocity in feminist research, the RRA requires that researchers, in partnership with collaborators, use their research to benefit participants and to influence social change. Overall, the above feminist principles inspired the creation of the RRA as a tool to support reflexive and relational research where all parties agree to their mutual responsibilities, especially in caring for the research participants.

Preventing epistemic injustice

Epistemic injustice is any injustice related to knowledge and thus, it fundamentally applies to research and the just acquisition, production, and dissemination of knowledge. Smith (2012) begins her book Decolonizing Methodologies stating that “the term ‘research’ is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism” (p. 1). Accepting this means to evaluate how imperial and colonial epistemologies shape research. Namely, imperialism and colonialism are systems of oppression that privilege one way of being and thinking over another. In research, this translates to privileging one way of learning, knowing, and sharing knowledge over others which devalues situated knowledges. If the basis of research is to learn more, know more, and teach more, then maintaining colonial and imperial research practices enacts injustice against other ways of knowing. We cannot underestimate the potential epistemic harm that can result from a research model that does not accommodate the epistemology of the research participants.

Similarly, an issue of epistemic injustice in research includes the concept of epistemic trust, or distrust, between researchers and the communities in which they learn from. When engaging with research participants to consult their knowledge and experiences, researchers must obtain their epistemic trust. As Fricker describes in her account of epistemic injustice, epistemic trust is about more than credibility judgments. ¹ It is also about heuristics, which are a complex web of reasonings we use to determine whether or not we can trust others (Origgi, 2012: 227). Origgi (2012) elaborates on the more nuanced considerations to building epistemic trust including the “inference on the subject’s reliability, inference on the content’s reliability, internalized social norms of complying to authority, socially distributed reputational cues, robust signals, emotional reactions, and moral commitments” (p. 227). In other words, there are multiple factors in a given situation that require an evaluation of individual trust before epistemic trust can be developed. For instance, internalized social norms of complying with authority can impact individual trust. In this case, participants may see researchers as authority figures and feel compelled to do as they are told. However, participants might also be aware of this social norm and actively resist it, therefore distrusting researchers and the authority they have over the knowledge they produce. The above considerations complicate a researcher’s ability to build epistemically trusting relationships with their participants. Thus, to support the building of trust between these parties and to mitigate epistemic injustice, the RRA asks researchers to consider and communicate how the knowledge they acquire will be used and how they will meet participant needs.

That being said, recognizing the importance of trust and care as core principals of feminist research, we recommend fostering epistemic aftercare in research. By epistemic aftercare, we mean that the epistemic product of the research needs to be cared for in order to make the findings meaningful in supporting those affected by the research. As explored above, performing research with the intent of generating new knowledge does not mitigate potential epistemic harm to participants and feminist research practices require researchers to care for subjects. Elliott (2019) poignantly writes that “empathy has its limits—[. . .] you need to write with love” (pp. 29–30), meaning to write with the desire to reduce harm to participants and to care for them even after the investigations are complete. Thus, in order to perform feminist and epistemically-just research, projects must act on their newly acquired knowledge to benefit the community in which they gathered information. Researchers who gather information from a community, then leave without initiating change, are commonly called parachute researchers. This practice carries the risk of epistemic injustice by producing knowledge only for the researchers and not for the communities researched. The RRA attempts to mitigate this problem by prompting researchers and collaborators to develop a plan for contributing to the community and to act on their findings. These relationships are especially important as community collaborators are well-positioned to put research knowledge into action. This is why the RRA includes a section for collaborators such as charities, NGOs, or other businesses that provide care for the communities of research participants. By including collaborators in the RRA, researchers are investing in a reciprocal agreement that accounts for the aftercare of communities through their own engagement and the engagement of collaborators. Namely, once research partners “know better,” they should collaborate with those who are best positioned to “do better” for the communities where they conducted their research. While research comes with risk of epistemic harm, the RRA helps to avoid such harm by building relationships between relevant parties, by developing an agreement that fosters trust, and by creating a clear plan to support the community after the research is complete.

Speaking for others: An epistemic violence

Many scholars, such as Linda Alcoff and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, have considered the ethics of speaking for others. As researchers who consult participants to collect data that will be analyzed, interpreted, theorized, synthesized, and disseminated in the pursuit of knowledge production, the problem of speaking for others must be considered.

To begin, Linda Alcoff suggests that this problem becomes evident in recognizing the impact of one’s social location on their work (Alcoff, 1991: 6). Notably, Alcoff (1991) suggests that: “where one speaks from affects the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to transcend one’s location (. . .)” (p. 7). In other words, when a researcher’s social location is different from those of participants, it prevents them from accurately speaking on behalf of participants. This conflict underlines the importance of reflexivity to analyze the power relations involved in the research and of providing participants agency over the knowledge they share (Alcoff, 1991: 7–8).

Alcoff takes this problem one step further as she describes how academics are assumed to be authorized to express the ideas, stories, and personal information of others by virtue of their intellectual qualifications (p. 7). Namely, researchers claim to be qualified to speak for others based on their training in performing ethical research, their ability to remain neutral or objective, and their intellectual mastery over the research topic. However, Alcoff (1991) reminds us that one’s social locations inhibit objectivity and that it is challenging to speak about others without simultaneously speaking for them (pp. 9, 11). In fact, she states: “when someone is speaking about others, or simply trying to describe their situation or some aspect of it, one may also be speaking in place of them, that is, speaking for them (. . .) it is difficult to distinguish speaking about from speaking for in all cases” (Alcoff, 1991: 9). Thus, the danger of speaking for others is that the participant’s agency can be diminished, their knowledge dismissed, or their stories appropriated (Alcoff, 1991: 7–8).

Similarly, Spivak (1994) questions whether the subaltern, a person in a marginalized position, can have their voice heard when intellectuals attempt to re-present the knowledge they collect from them (p. 69). Significantly, Spivak (1994) states that: “[the subaltern’s] concrete experiences are currently disclosed through the concrete experiences of the intellectual who diagnoses the episteme. The intellectual has social capital that allows him to consolidate the concrete experiences of subjects” (1p.69). Since all individuals are shaped by their social locations, researchers cannot speak about others, or for others, without the risk of epistemic violence where the situated knowledges of research subjects may be disqualified, deemed inadequate, or transformed (Spivak, 1994: 74, 90). To prevent such violence, Alcoff (1991) suggests listening closely to and, speaking with subjects (pp. 22–23). In recognizing the value of the subject’s lived experiences as the truth and considering the impact of our own positionality as researchers, we can begin to give voice to participants and to avoid speaking for them (Alcoff, 1991: 23; Spivak, 1994: 81). In this way, “the intellectual neither abnegates [their] discursive role nor presumes an authenticity of the oppressed but still allows for the possibility that the oppressed will produce [an alternative narrative]” (Alcoff, 1991: 23). That being said, the conclusions of Alcoff and Spivak point to the importance of reflecting on one’s positionality, interrogating one’s social locations, being open to criticism, and engaging responsibly with participants as mutual coauthors in the research (Alcoff, 1991: 24; Spivak, 1994: 69).

Everything considered, the RRA was developed to assist researchers and other collaborators in reflecting on their social positions before engaging in relationships with participants. As the RRA is exchanged between members of the research relationship, critiques and negotiations are invited to identify the potential for epistemic violence and to provide suggestions to mitigate this risk. These reflections may support researchers and collaborators in “speaking with” participants rather than “speaking for them.” Finally, the RRA encourages researchers and collaborators to consult participants directly for feedback on their proposed research and to consider how they can engage them reciprocally. This acknowledges the value of participants as holders of the truth, as agentive contributors to the research, and as coauthors.

Prioritizing coauthorship

Researchers positioned in academia and other privileged intellectual positions must consider the impact of their privileges on their research practices and their relationships with research participants. As intellectual masters and contributors to the expansion of knowledge, researchers task themselves with exploring, collecting, analyzing, and theorizing information obtained from a range of sources whether human or inhuman (Singh, 2018: 9). Research is a dominant form of knowledge production and contributes to the researcher’s mastery over a body of knowledge (Singh, 2018: 9). Julietta Singh, a decolonial scholar, explores how dominant modes of knowledge production risk engaging in mastery over others, such as research subjects, despite claims to “goodness, civility, stewardship and humanitarianism” (Singh, 2018: 7). In the pursuit of intellectual mastery, research subjects risk becoming objectified as instruments in the pursuit of knowledge (Singh, 2018: 9). Further, in return for performing research, researchers gain access to resources, funding, rewards, and power over how knowledge is produced and shared (Nagar, 2014: 3). Having power over the knowledge shared by participants provides researchers the ability to represent these knowledges in a way that often dismisses, or radically transforms what was originally shared (Nagar, 2014: 3). When researchers fail to consider their privileged social locations, there is a risk of becoming complicit to epistemic injustice and violence toward research participants (Nagar, 2014: 3). As a strategy to mitigate these risks, Nagar (2014), a scholar and activist, stresses the importance of solidarity and responsibility in research relationships (p. 3).

To foster responsibility and solidarity when engaging in research, Nagar (2014) proposes engaging in radical vulnerability: a series of reflections and discussions that reveal one’s social locations and their impact on the research relationship to develop an alliance that supports ethical and responsible knowledge production (p. 12). In other words, Nagar invites researchers to reflect vulnerably on their positions of power, the rewards they may receive from the research, their conflicts of interest, their intent in performing the study, their dedication to enacting meaningful change in their field, and any other complicities they have to epistemic hierarchies. By sharing these reflections with other members of the research relationship, including participants, it is possible for members to interrogate each other’s positionality, to build trust, and work together to mitigate complicities to epistemic violence (Nagar, 2014: 15). This radical vulnerability can foster responsible and ethical research relationships which redistribute power imbalances through a framework of coauthorship (Nagar, 2014: 13).

Nagar’s (2014) concept of coauthorship is used to frame the RRA, which incorporates radical vulnerability and solidarity to build reciprocal relationships where all collaborators engage in a mutual alliance (p. 163). Nagar (2014) explains that coauthorship “is an ongoing dialogue among continuously co-evolving multiple selves that can interrupt epistemic violence and replace them with frameworks that underscore reciprocity” (p. 163). In order to engage in coauthorship, researchers must employ radical vulnerability and “be willing to be interrogated and judged in the same way as [the subject is being interrogated]” (Nagar, 2014: 163). This mutual interrogation can allow collaborators to identify potential harms emanating from their privileged locations and to re-orient the power dynamics in the research relationship. For example, to challenge the researcher’s mastery over knowledge production, researchers should give participants agency and authority over their own narratives as co-authors (Nagar, 2014: 161). Allowing participants to be co-authors in the research recognizes knowledge as their intellectual property. In fact, Nagar (2014) states that: “coauthoring stories in and through feminist alliance work makes it possible to mobilize experience and memory work in ways that connect questions of feminist subject and subjectivity with those of representation” (p. 162). Therefore, by engaging with participants as collaborators in the research alliance, the RRA helps make it possible to work ethically across social locations and to avoid epistemic violence where researchers make decisions about which knowledge to analyze, transform, and circulate (Nagar, 2014: 170). Overall, coauthored research relationships should consider reciprocity in how their participants can mutually contribute to and benefit from the project as coauthors.

The RRA serves as an exercise of radical vulnerability between researchers, collaborators, and participants. It makes visible the reflections of each party and provides an opportunity for interrogation, critique, and negotiation. Furthermore, it supports a framework of coauthorship by inviting members of the research alliance to explicitly share their intentions for the project, to consider the impact of their social locations, to reflect on how to engage in reciprocity, and to commit to enacting meaningful change. We encourage researcher partners to use and modify the RRA to reflect the particular needs of their research relationships and to foster ethical practices through coauthorship.

Applications of the RRA

The RRA is a tool that was developed using feminist principles toward supporting ethical research collaborations and thus, it is most applicable to research being conducted with community partners, or projects that prioritize a feminist approach. However, we believe that the RRA can have a significant impact how research projects are conducted across all research disciplines. Considering the RRA’s focus on personal reflexivity between research partners, the tool can help collaborators from any field to reflect on their privileges, their relationships to epistemic hierarchies, and the potential harms emanating from their social locations. Meanwhile, the RRA requires researchers to connect with collaborators to ask how they would like to contribute to and benefit from the project. By committing to shared responsibilities in the research and to sharing its rewards mutually, the RRA generates reciprocal relationships that are integral to the ethics of any project. Moreover, the RRA requires researchers to make explicit commitments to caring for research participants which should be a priority in all investigations. This helps avoid parachute researching and expands the potential for generating change from research findings. We believe that these combined processes are integral to performing any research project ethically. Therefore, we propose that the RRA should be applied to all research projects as a required practice analogous to ethics approval, but that extends across all stages of research.

While we believe in the widespread potential of the RRA to support ethical and feminist research beyond normative ethics processes, we also acknowledge the existing barriers for researchers and collaborators to use this tool. Some of these challenges may include conflicting schedules, commitments, opinions, or priorities. For instance, using the RRA requires additional time and energy devoted to developing relationships with invested parties. Most projects operate on a budget that constrains the time and resources available to building relationships, to providing care for participants, and to implementing research findings. Also, some might argue that research is more efficient when conducted with fewer people and that the RRA requires additional effort in communicating between multiple parties. Recognizing the various challenges of adapting current research practices to include the RRA, using this tool can allow researchers to facilitate these interactions, to improve the ethics of their project, and to increase the impact of their study. By using the RRA, researchers and community collaborators are taking steps toward responsible research practices that serve the needs of the communities in which they are working. With each effort toward this kind of agreement, researchers and collaborators can re-evaluate their practices, improve the ethics of their project, and engage in meaningful change.

Conclusion

Each research project is unique and thus requires a tailored approach to ensuring ethical concerns are being addressed before, during, and after the research process. Research that is feminist and ethical requires more than approval from an ethics review board; it requires a continuous commitment to applying ethical practices throughout the research process and beyond. To adopt such practices, we recommend that investigators use the RRA as a tool that expands beyond existing research ethics tools to provide an opportunity for explicit reflection, reflexivity, relationship-building, and to make a documented commitment with research partners. Based on feminist research principles, the RRA will guide research partners in interrogating their social location relative to their work and in consulting community members impacted by the project. The goal is to help researchers build responsible relationships with those involved, including participants and community collaborators. In order to achieve this goal, primary investigators can use the RRA to foster relationships with community collaborators that are best positioned to put research findings into practice and to create meaningful social change. To conclude, the RRA is the result of observing barriers experienced by a particular community organization when engaging in research and of expanding the resulting tool to create an agreement that is useful for any researcher or research partner. We hope that researchers and other collaborators will use the RRA to generate impactful change in their communities. Though each project will require the RRA to be tailored to its specific needs, the RRA is a tool from which all parties can commit to engaging in ethical, reciprocal and meaningful research in the community.