Research ethics committee members' skills

Themes

Research ethics committee members' skills

What is this about?

In order to assess the ethical dimensions of research projects, members of research ethics committees (RECs) need expertise. But what skills constitute expertise? The European Network of Research Ethics and Research Integrity (ENERI)1 has identified crucial skills research ethics and research integrity experts should have. Four sets of skills can be distinguished, namely hard skills, soft skills, process skills, and emotional skills. While only some hard skills are necessary for conferring expert status to an individual, RECs benefit from memberships with diverse skill sets.

Why is this important?

Nowadays not only research projects on the biomedical sciences, but increasingly also research projects in various other disciplines, like psychology or education, require ethical review. For that reason, RECs will continue to play an important role in ethical research governance. Hence, an important question is which skills REC members should ideally have.

Conducting thorough ethical reviews of research projects not only presupposes sufficient disciplinary expertise to understand proposed research designs and methodologies, but also skills crucial for delivering practical recommendations that accord with prevalent social norms. Moreover, skills conducive to maintaining dialogical attitudes among all REC members certainly are beneficial as RECs modus operandi is deliberation. Consequently, systematizing these skills is helpful for setting up effective RECs and selecting members according to transparent criteria.

For whom is this important?

phd students

The Embassy Editorial team, Iris Lechner, Natalie Evans, Rosie Hastings, Andrijana Perković Paloš, Tom Lindemann contributed to this theme. Latest contribution was Oct 22, 2021

Other information