Ethics in construction health and safety research: reflections from a PhD project

Construction health and safety researchers need to be aware of the various aspects associated with the ethical conduct of research. Most journals now require researchers to make some reference to some aspects of informed consent and confidentiality of informants as a way of addressing ethical conduct of research. Universities and research institutions also expect all researchers to follow established rules and guidelines as prescribed by institutional ethics research boards and/or committees, through an approval process prior to the conduct of research. However, ethical issues permeate the entire research process, yet there is little in terms of published literature that discusses how this important issue is actually addressed by the researchers during the actual conduct of research. This is a significant gap which this paper seeks to redress by reflecting on how and what ethical issues were addressed during planning, purpose and research questions, data collection, analysis and interpretation stages of the authors PhD project.