A Narrative Account of Ethics Committees and Their Codes

This five-part sociological analysis of research ethics review processes begins with a narrative where Tolich describes his moral career that began in 1992 when he submitted an ethics application to Massey University to conduct what proved to be a successful ethnography on the horse racing industry (Tolich 1995; 1996; Tolich and Eichbaum, 1996; Tolich, 2001; Tolich and Bell, 2007). The outcome of this ethics committee deliberation produced a stigma (Goffman, 2009); Tolich's qualitative research design did not meet the ethics committee's biomedical expectations at issue. Part two describes the generation of Tolich's sociological imagination (Mills, 1959), how he recognised his private troubles with the ethics committee were public issues writ large in the literature (van den Hoonaard, 2001; Pritchard, 2002; Israel and Hay, 2004; Haggerty, 2004). Part three reports on Tolich's attempts to create innovative ethics committees and resources that are supportive of social science researchers. Part Four reviews ethics codes finding they contain little nuance for qualitative researches' potential to cause participants harm (from internal confidentiality (Tolich, 2004), focus groups (Tolich, 2009) and by ethics committee practice that make the return of transcripts to participants mandatory. The article ends contrasting the impoverishment of codes of ethics in New Zealand with those in Australia and Canada and calling for the creation of an equivalent National Statement.Stigmatising Ethics ReviewThe best piece of career advice Tolich was given as a graduate student at the University of California, Davis was to 'find a niche, dig deep and claim that niche as your own'. Tolich did that in his first academic appointment at Massey University in the realm of research ethics. When he arrived at Massey University 25 years ago, Tolich knew little, if anything, about research ethics. Neither his PhD nor his postdoctoral appointment at the University of California required formal ethics review. It was Massey University that gave him the opportunity to dig deeply into research ethics; an opportunity for which in the fullness of time he is grateful.Tolich's first ethics application at Massey University in 1992 documented a simple ethnographic research design. He wanted to study a workplace, the local horse racing industry. A member of the Massey University ethics committee framed his ethnography as nothing more than journalism. The ethics committee member asked what was journalism doing in this university? From Erving Goffman's (2009) perspective of the normal, Tolich's application wasn't normal. Apparently he had departed negatively from the particular biomedical expectations at issue. This disconnect was a rude awakening Tolich realising that qualitative research was not understood, nor respected. In a Goffmanian sense his stigmatised moral career created his academic career as over the past 25 years Tolich has taken steps to address this disjunction.Tolich's first step to build his academic career was to take van den Hoonaard's (2002) advice and gain membership on the ethics committee as an academic representative. Twelve months later Tolich became deputy chair of this ethics committee. As his interest in ethics deepened, he joined the Health and Disability Ethics Committee in Manawatu, Wanganui and when that committee was restructured in 2003 Tolich was reassigned to the Multi-Region Health and Disability Ethics Committee. On this new committee Tolich served as Chairperson and his committee expertise was listed as an ethicist. However, Tolich remained first and foremost a sociologist meaning he theorised ethical relationships as an array of unequal power relations most notably between the researcher and the researched. He also saw unequal power relationships between ethics committees and social scientists, especially when ethics committees and their codes were dominated by biomedical model. A second step Tolich took was to read the sociological literature detailing these power imbalances, and it was here that his private troubles were manifest as public issues. …

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