Like all good projects, this one has a long history. The seeds for this project were planted many years ago when I was an anthropology student who regularly engaged in discussions and debates about ethics and research. In those early days I only had a few encounters with ethics committees and, overall, found the experiences unproblematic.
In 1992 I moved to Australia and, along with my health science students, had my first encounters with Australian ethics committees. I shall describe these experiences simply as “interesting.”
The subcommittee decided that it needed to be proactive in addressing the increasing number of concerns about and problems with the ethical review of members’ applications. We set aside meetings to specifically discuss the topic and encouraged members to engage in the education of ethics committees through their applications. To help members do this, the Transcultural Mental Health Centre provided funds for the development of an annotated bibliography (Fitzgerald, Khavarpour, & Williamson, 1997).
In response to an article in the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Newsletter I approached Madelyn Iris of SfAA’s ethics committee for some assistance and support on how to address these issues. She was very supportive, noting that these problems were not unusual, and supplied me with a body of papers from a workshop. She also asked me to write about my experiences for the newsletter, which I did (Fitzgerald, 1994).
During this time I had become a member of the Transcultural
Mental Health Centre’s Research Subcommittee, established
in 1992. I became Co-chair of that subcommittee in 1998. Members of
this subcommittee include people from a wide range of disciplines, professions,
and institutions.
During this time there were a number of initiatives in Australia (e.g., Dodds, Albury, & Thomson, 1994; McNeill, P. M., Berglund, C. A., & Webster, 1990, 1992; NHMRC, 1995) and elsewhere, addressing the same kinds of issues. This was not a local problem; it was national and international.
Then there seemed to be a lull in the storm. Although people still had “interesting” experiences with ethical review, the reviews seemed somewhat less of a problem and the problems that did arise seemed to be easier to handle.
In the late 1990s issues related to research ethical review and ethics committees rose again. The eye of the storm seemed to have past and new issues brought the issues into prominence again. In 1999 I was approached by the Transcultural Mental Health Centre (TMHC) to revive the earlier bibliographic project. I agreed to do so if I could be given the time to address the topic in a different way and with greater rigour.
The first step was to try out the new approach I proposed. I did this in a presentation at a conference sponsored in part by TMHC (Fitzgerald, Khavarpour, & Williamson, 2001). The response to the presentation encouraged me to refine this idea and take it forward. I submitted a study leave application to do this in 2002. TMHC was just one of the organisations that agreed to sponsor the study. Thus, data collection for the project began late in 2002 as part of my study leave.
In the early days of the subcommittee, ethics and issues related to ethical review were a frequent topic of discussion. In fact, these meetings became a focal point for discussions on how to deal with the ethical review of health and mental health research, work with potentially vulnerable populations, particularly projects that involved the methods and methodologies from the social sciences. There was at this time a dramatic increase in the use of these methods and methodologies among health professionals because they addressed the kinds of questions people were asking, and needed to ask.
As I already had a proposal that was reasonably well developed, I decided to refine it and submit it for a three-year ARC (Australian Research Council) Discovery Grant. It was titled: An Analysis of Research Ethics and the Ethical Review Process as Culture and Cultural Process. ARC funded the project. The responses of the reviewers and the people we have talked to in conjunction with the project indicate that the project addresses a felt need.