Reflections on the procedural and practical ethics in researching professional social work writing

Abstract

This paper explores the procedural ethics and ethics in practice involved in a multi-agency research project exploring professional social work writing. Drawing on institutional documentation and a researcher’s field notes over two years, the requirements and processes involved in complying with academia-facing and agency-facing regulatory frameworks are summarised and challenges highlighted. The main part of the paper centres on ethics in practice, building on Sarangi’s framework for articulating the communicative dimensions to research ethics, and foregrounding the importance of ongoing dialogue between researchers and participant-stakeholders. Reflective accounts from three participant-stakeholders illustrate the interrelationship between what are often presumed to be distinct moments of a research chronology – access, representation and dissemination – in the process of knowledge making. The paper concludes by highlighting the differences between academia- and agency-facing procedural ethics, and arguing for greater institutional recognition of ethics in practice, in particular the importance of ongoing dialogue between researchers and participant-stakeholders at all stages of the research process.