Pioneering Past and Bright of Impactful Research and Scholarly Achievements

“EXCELLENCE THROUGH KNOWLEDGE” P A G E 17 RESEARCH ETHICS Culture-sensitive Factors in Research Ethics: Rewards in Research as Enticement or Benefit? Adelani F. Ogunrinade 1 and Cynthia O. Onyefulu 2 1 Office of Graduate Studies & Research (now SGSRE) 2 Faculty of Education & Liberal Studies In an increasingly collaborative situation in the biomedical world, there is often a need for recognizing and dealing with culturally sensitive factors in research involving human subjects. However, issues of ethical relativism often becloud decision-making on research ethics, especially when researchers from developing world collaborate with researchers from the developing world in areas such as enlisting participants in field or clinical research and rewarding such participants appropriately. In this paper, we define the cultural boundaries of ethical research within a traditional value system in Africa. Using seven case reports, we argue that, in spite of such culture-bound values, universal rights dictate incentives not be used as a means of coercion of participants and that the benefits of participation in research be just, fair and appropriate, as cutting corners through inducements create bias, lead to unfulfilled expectations and are counter-productive in the long run. Culture is a multidimensional phenomenon which applies at four distinct levels – the political and economic (supra), the national identity (macro), the professional and industrial norms (meso) and the organizational/family level (micro). Thus, the definition of culture varies from the behavioural, the professional, the religious, the judgmental, the moral, to the perceptional. Although, there are up to 164 definitions of culture, culture generally represents an order of life through which human beings construct meaning via the various dimensions of social life, based on a traditional of inherited knowledge. Because culture and moral values are so intricately woven, it is generally believed that ethical principles are relative and the issue of what are the right values, the normative standards of conduct and what is just, are also relative. Consideration of ethics in research ensures good research and clinical practice. However, the western concept of universal ethics have been challenged on the grounds of relativity, especially against the backdrop of inequality of power relations and the unequal standards of international (collaborative)research between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. While international ethical guidelines define the duties of a researcher, culture and traditional rights and norms define inherent rights of individuals. CynthiaO. Onyefulu