Developing and establishing research guidelines in a private higher education institution of Saudi Arabia. An experience

OBJECTIVES: To develop and establish research guidelines of international standards that matches appropriate cross-cultural and religious considerations of the region. METHODS: We followed the guidelines given by the American College of Cardiology Foundation and American Heart Association, Inc., Washington DC, USA task force on practice to develop research guidelines of international standards for our institution. In October 2015 the task team (of a private higher education institution in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) qualitatively analyzed the national codes and guidelines using 19 ethical protections stated in the other universally accepted international guidelines. RESULTS: The electronic search yielded 11 different guidelines and documents, of which 4 documents were from Saudi Arabia. When the Saudi Arabian documents were compared using 19 universally accepted ethical protections, we found one of the document contained 15 of the 19 ethical protections, another document contained 9 protections and the least being 5 of the 19 protections. CONCLUSION: Research guidelines of international standards were developed with respect to the cultural, traditional, and religious considerations of the Kingdom, providing a valuable framework to guide our institutional researchers to conduct ethically sound inquiry.