Research Ethics

Cheryl N. Poth, PhD, is a Professor in the Faculty of Education and faculty member of the research-intensive Centre for Research and Applied Measurement and Evaluation at the University of Alberta. In this role, she has developed and taught graduate-level research methods and program evaluation courses in addition to supervising and mentoring students, faculty, and local as well as global community members in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research. She is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, three books as well as numerous book chapters. Her work has been recognized by the American Educational Research Association with the Division D Significant Contributions to Research Methodology Award in 2023 (with Peggy Shannon-Baker) and by the Textbook & Academic Authors Association with the Most Promising New Textbook Award in 2020 and the McGuffey Longevity Award for Qualitative Research book in 2018 (with John Creswell). She served as Editor of the SAGE Handbook of Mixed Methods Research (2023) and as Guest Coeditor of several journal special issues, including the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. In addition to more than 40 invited talks and 150 conference presentations, she has led research methods workshops with diverse audiences on four continents. She served as an Advisory Board Member of the International Institute of Qualitative Methodology (2014-2020); the President of the Mixed Methods International Research Association (2017-2018); a Research Fellow at the University of South Africa (2018-2020); a Helen Glass Scholar in the College of Nursing within the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba (2022); and as a MERIT Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University (2023-2025). In 2009, she cofounded the interdisciplinary Alberta Clinical and Community-Based Evaluation Research Team to advance innovative community-university research partnership supports for program planning and impact assessments of service delivery for individuals with complex needs. She serves as the Methodologist on several cross-disciplinary research teams and has led federally, provincially, and locally funded research projects. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research and is an editorial board member of several journals. Updates on her work can be found on her website at https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/cheryl-poth/.

What is meant by research ethics? How do I identify critical ethical issues for my research? How do I obtain free and informed consent from research participants? How do I protect privacy and confidentiality as a researcher? How do I design equitable research procedures? How do I conclude research projects ethically? What are the practicalities of responding to ethical issues as they arise?