Conducting creative research: Research ethics and research conduct in art and design

Abstract

The application of research ethics and responsible conduct of research standards in art and design scholarship presents unique challenges. Traditional ethics and conduct frameworks, often shaped by biomedical and social science research models, can conflict with creative methodologies. Key issues include tensions between institutional regulations and creative practices, the integration of emergent methods (e.g. research-creation), the complexity of overlapping professional roles, and the unique ethical obligations of working in Indigenous research contexts. Drawing on Canadian case studies from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and OCAD University, this topics piece highlights three collaborative initiatives—(1) a series of workshops and presentations, (2) the development of open access educational resources, and (3) the launch of a student research design award—all of which strive to bridge gaps in understanding and compliance. These efforts emphasize the need for flexible, collaborative, and context-sensitive approaches. Ongoing critical engagement and adaptation in research ethics and conduct education, particularly in regards to emerging technologies and the growth of interdisciplinary research practices, is vital.

Introduction

For art and design researchers and scholars, understanding and adherence to research ethics and responsible conduct of research standards (also known as “research integrity”) may require translation and adaptation. There is potential for confusion due to the disconnect between creative practices and the biomedical or social science research methods which inform the development of regulatory and guidance documents in research ethics and conduct. With the increased prevalence and use of creative or arts-based methods in scholarly disciplines outside of art and design (cf. Burnard et al., 2022; Leavy, 2020), translation and training to support creative projects is needed. While emergent creative methods—including co-creation and visual methods—are increasingly valued as qualitative methods, the use of creative methods requires institutional research ethics review processes to be flexible and adaptive rather than procedural (Brown, 2023: 158). This topics piece offers a summary of issues in the context of creative and arts-based methods and three innovative responses by art and design universities in Canada. These efforts demonstrate that active, flexible, and collaborative responses by institutional research support services (including libraries, research offices, and research ethics boards) are necessary in meeting research ethics and research conduct expectations.

Issues of ethics and conduct in art and design scholarship

Awareness and understanding of research ethics and responsible conduct of research in art and design scholarship are linked to at least four key issues: (1) tensions between creative practices and institutional research ethics and conduct standards; (2) the disciplines’ unique approaches to research methodologies; (3) the intermingling of professional roles that characterize creative work; and (4) the unique conduct expectations when artists and designers, Indigenous and settler, are engaged in research or creative methods that involve Indigenous territories, communities, and topics.

Tensions between creative practice and regulatory standards

Limited awareness of and lingering resistance to the imposition of research ethics and conduct standards reflect known tensions between scholarly art and design practices and institutional expectations of research ethics and responsible conduct of research (St. Hilaire, 2018: 28; Voarino et al., 2019: 312). Creative practitioners (i.e. designers, filmmakers, visual artists, etc.) describe difficulties in meeting institutional standards, especially those originally developed for disciplines rooted in empirical methods (Bolt, 2016: 187–188; Bhagwatti et al. quoted in Klassen, 2016: 240; Loveless, 2015: 41; St. Hilaire, 2018: 36). Those standards are even described as comprimising creative work to the extent that “good” research is at odds with “good” art (Lowry, 2015: 43–44). Bolt (2020) explores the inherent discontinuity between the social value of artists’ capacity to provoke discomfort among viewers or participants, a legacy of avant-garde and modernist notions of dissensus, and the ethical principle of beneficence (or in the terminology of Canadian guidelines “concern for welfare”). For Bolt, there is ethical value in engaging artists and ethics reviewers in debates over the value of the “capacity [of art] to create trouble and discomfort” (Bolt, 2020: 163–164). In scholarly settings, this disconnect between standards and practice can result in avoidance of in-class training or mentoring of research ethics and conduct principles during student supervision.

Unique approaches to research methodologies

The integration of creative methods with scholarly research has various terminologies and approaches, for example “arts-based methods,” “research-creation,” “creative methods,” and “creative practice,” each presenting challenges in the application of research ethics and conduct standards. In the case of “research-creation” (a term favored by research funding agencies in Canada) the combination of social sciences and humanities research with art practices, and the subsequent application of academic research standards to creative methods causes tensions (Loveless, 2015: 41–42). ¹ Canadian national guidelines exempt creative practice from research ethics review by distinguishing between creative activities and research. This exemption for creative, artistic practices that do not “obtain responses from participants that will be analyzed to answer a research question” applies regardless of participant risk, and does not elaborate on is application for other creative disciplines such as design or interdisciplinary studies (Canadian Institutes of Health Research et al., 2022: 21–22). The potential confusion that may result from this distinction of creative practice from research intensifies the gaps in understanding of research ethics and conduct for art and design scholars (Klassen, 2019). While experienced researchers can often navigate these issues, graduate students may struggle to determine which standards apply to their work (Asia et al., 2024). In some cases, the ethics review is understood as counter to the approaches ethos. For Boothby (2024), a mandatory ethics review ² of their artistic research, which involved a musical ensemble including differently abled musicians, imposed science-based standards for ethics and conduct, which contrasted with artistic standards favoring an “ethics of care” approach (pp. 121–23).

Multiple roles in creative research projects

Given the intermingling of creative practices with scholarly appointments and responsibilities, art and design researchers and scholars may encounter ethical complexities when juggling their multiple roles in concurrently creating both creative works and research outcomes (Noury et al., 2018: 21). They may be mentors to students involved in the project’s production, partnering with community-based groups or commercial entities, all while holding commercial and creative rights over an academic project’s creative content. Multiple roles risk bias toward the career value of the creative project over its value to students or the educational setting that produced it (Noury et al., 2018: 84–89). Multiple roles can also add compounding ethical obligations for researchers. Hansen describes how a graduate-level creative project within a disabled community resulted in three layers of ethical awareness: for the context and relationships; for equity, diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility; and for university ethical protocols (Hansen, 2023: 372). As such, practice-based creative methods, while sometimes layered over qualitative research methods, need to attend to relationships and accessibility, in addition to the wording of a consent form.

Research involving indigenous territories, communities, and topics

When creative research methods include Indigenous territories, communities, and topics, there is a responsibility to include community-based or First Nations-specific approaches to research ethics and research conduct. In Canada, the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, along with other guidelines like the First Nations Principles of OCAP^® (recognizing Indigenous data ownership, copyright, access, and possession), set standards for cultural sovereignty, protocols, and ownership that apply to research as well as creative production (First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC), n.d.). Despite these high-level tools, support structures for Indigenous researchers and isolated communities are not necessarily available or appropriate. Given a community’s or First Nation’s specific conditions, refusal of research might be more generative than participating (Tuck, 2009: 423; Tuck and Yang, 2013: 28). While specific Indigenous research ethics practices are in various stages of development, university research services need to recognize the limits of the universalist guidelines and policies for research ethics and conduct and respect Indigenous research practices where they exist ³ (Hudson, 2009: 129; Kirkness and Barnhardt, 1991: 14).

Addressing gaps in awareness

Three innovative approaches to addressing gaps in awareness of research ethics and research conduct have been applied by art and design universities in Canada: (1) the presentation of a workshop and presentation series; (2) the development of open access online resources; and (3) the creation of a student research design award. These initiatives involved collaboration between research ethics and administration offices with other university departments that serve researchers, such as the university library, privacy office, and writing center. While the task of translating research ethics and conduct standards for art and design researchers and scholars benefits from various support services located throughout the universities, the collaborative approach was an innovative response to persistent issues.

Conducting creative research series (workshops and presentations)

Between 2021–2023 members from research offices at Emily Carr University of Art and Design (ECU) and OCAD University (OCADU), with the support of a Government of Canada grant from the Secretariat on Responsible Conduct of Research Education and Training Support, collaborated on initiatives to raise awareness of research ethics and conduct standards. The collaborative aim was to develop programs that would improve accessibility and relatability for researchers and students. Together, they produced Conducting Creative Research (CCR), a series of presentations and workshops that expanded conversations regarding research ethics and conduct beyond government and institutional guidelines. The series focused on three broad categories: Partnerships and Reciprocity; Authorship and Distribution of Creative Knowledge; and Methods and Accountability. Online presentations by respected practitioners demonstrated the critical relevance of research ethics principles in their work. In addition to practitioners, experts in research services, including privacy officers and librarians, offered skills development workshops. The presentations were aimed at both institutions’ research communities, while the workshops served students and emerging researchers.

The CCR series drew on a stand-alone resource, Toolkit for RCRC: Summary of Issues in Responsible Conduct in Research-Creation and Proposed Tools for Reflection (Toolkit), which was developed in the context of research-creation (Noury et al., 2018). The Government of Canada’s Tri-Agency Framework: Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR Framework) also informed the series, particularly in the areas of research ethics compliance, scholarly rigor, conflicts of interest, and authorship (Canadian Institutes of Health Research et al., 2021). While the RCR Framework offers these clear categories, and the Toolkit provides examples specific to creative practitioners, the CCR series went further in applying research ethics and conduct principles in art and design. For instance, themes of responsibility to communities and decolonial distribution of knowledge were addressed in depth.

Open access online resources

Another strategy to address research ethics and conduct issues in art and design has resulted from a collaborative relationship between the library and the research ethics board at ECU. Together they worked to create library research guides for “Research Ethics + Conduct,” “Data Management,” and “Indigenous Research Ethics,” and made the CCR recordings and summaries available through the open access institutional repository. This collaboration continues between the two departments through the development and presentation of lectures and interactive programming for graduate students and lunch-hour sessions open to the community on research ethics and conduct topics.

Student research design award

Another recent initiative of the ECU Research Ethics Board is the Student Research Design Award, which recognizes undergraduate and graduate students’ efforts to integrate creativity in communication design with principles of research ethics. Documents such as recruitment posters and informed consent forms that demonstrate students’ understanding of research ethics principles are rewarded with an honorarium. In the inaugural award jury, a student research ethics board member served as the award committee chair, furthering interest in research ethics and conduct amongst student researchers.

Conclusion

The initiatives described above, workshops and presentations on research conduct in art and design research, creation of online educational resources, and student research design award, relied on cooperative efforts between Canadian art and design universities. A main goal of the CCR series was to emphasize the value of applying real art and design examples in the translation of research ethics and conduct standards. Interpretation of and compliance with these standards in art and design settings would benefit from further study and ongoing attention. Art and design researchers and scholars face unique ethical and conduct-related issues concerning authorship, multiple and competing roles, biases, and security and privacy of creative data, particularly with the expanded use of machine learning technologies in research. An ongoing challenge for all those involved in research ethics and responsible conduct of research in art and design is to recognize the need for dynamic and continued critical reflection.