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Ethical considerations of phone-based interviews from three studies of COVID-19 impact in Bihar, India

Phone-based interviews present a range of ethical challenges, including how to ensure informed consent and privacy and maintain confidentiality. Our paper presents conceptual and practical ethical considerations taken into account across three telephone studies on the impact of COVID-19 conducted fo...

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Autores principales: Khalil, Karima, Das, Priya, Kammowanee, Rochana, Saluja, Deepika, Mitra, Priyanjali, Das, Shamayita, Gharai, Dipwanita, Bhatt, Dinesh, Kumar, Navneet, Franzen, Samuel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8375446/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34404691
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005981
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author Khalil, Karima
Das, Priya
Kammowanee, Rochana
Saluja, Deepika
Mitra, Priyanjali
Das, Shamayita
Gharai, Dipwanita
Bhatt, Dinesh
Kumar, Navneet
Franzen, Samuel
author_facet Khalil, Karima
Das, Priya
Kammowanee, Rochana
Saluja, Deepika
Mitra, Priyanjali
Das, Shamayita
Gharai, Dipwanita
Bhatt, Dinesh
Kumar, Navneet
Franzen, Samuel
author_sort Khalil, Karima
collection PubMed
description Phone-based interviews present a range of ethical challenges, including how to ensure informed consent and privacy and maintain confidentiality. Our paper presents conceptual and practical ethical considerations taken into account across three telephone studies on the impact of COVID-19 conducted following India’s nationwide lockdown imposed in March 2020. Two studies captured COVID-19 response impact on primary-level Reproductive Maternal Neonatal and Child Health (RMNCH) services and on provider wellness, respectively. The third study focused on how the gendered experience of COVID-19 and the state’s response to control transmission impacted women’s lives, focusing on health services, livelihood, entitlements and social change, by interviewing individual women. The ethical challenges as well as the advantages of digital data collection are presented with recommendations for low-resource settings. Ethical considerations included the above challenges as well as avoiding posing unreasonable time burden on the respondents, framing questions with a gendered lens, considering emotional states given contagion concerns and economic uncertainties, and redressing pandemic-induced distress. Using scripted Hindi was challenging in consent-taking, as was protecting household respondents’ privacy and confidentiality during lockdown. Unanticipated positive ethical implications of using a telephone approach included providing respondents privacy and catharsis, respondents choosing convenient interview times and affording health providers more privacy than institutional inperson interviews. Internalising empathy, respect and appreciative enquiry are key to establishing rapport in the absence of prior relationships. Institutional Review Board (IRB) time limits on call duration need to be flexible to allow for ‘active listening’ and empathetic enquiry in surveys on the impact of COVID-19.
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spelling pubmed-83754462021-08-20 Ethical considerations of phone-based interviews from three studies of COVID-19 impact in Bihar, India Khalil, Karima Das, Priya Kammowanee, Rochana Saluja, Deepika Mitra, Priyanjali Das, Shamayita Gharai, Dipwanita Bhatt, Dinesh Kumar, Navneet Franzen, Samuel BMJ Glob Health Practice Phone-based interviews present a range of ethical challenges, including how to ensure informed consent and privacy and maintain confidentiality. Our paper presents conceptual and practical ethical considerations taken into account across three telephone studies on the impact of COVID-19 conducted following India’s nationwide lockdown imposed in March 2020. Two studies captured COVID-19 response impact on primary-level Reproductive Maternal Neonatal and Child Health (RMNCH) services and on provider wellness, respectively. The third study focused on how the gendered experience of COVID-19 and the state’s response to control transmission impacted women’s lives, focusing on health services, livelihood, entitlements and social change, by interviewing individual women. The ethical challenges as well as the advantages of digital data collection are presented with recommendations for low-resource settings. Ethical considerations included the above challenges as well as avoiding posing unreasonable time burden on the respondents, framing questions with a gendered lens, considering emotional states given contagion concerns and economic uncertainties, and redressing pandemic-induced distress. Using scripted Hindi was challenging in consent-taking, as was protecting household respondents’ privacy and confidentiality during lockdown. Unanticipated positive ethical implications of using a telephone approach included providing respondents privacy and catharsis, respondents choosing convenient interview times and affording health providers more privacy than institutional inperson interviews. Internalising empathy, respect and appreciative enquiry are key to establishing rapport in the absence of prior relationships. Institutional Review Board (IRB) time limits on call duration need to be flexible to allow for ‘active listening’ and empathetic enquiry in surveys on the impact of COVID-19. BMJ Publishing Group 2021-08-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8375446/ /pubmed/34404691 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005981 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Practice
Khalil, Karima
Das, Priya
Kammowanee, Rochana
Saluja, Deepika
Mitra, Priyanjali
Das, Shamayita
Gharai, Dipwanita
Bhatt, Dinesh
Kumar, Navneet
Franzen, Samuel
Ethical considerations of phone-based interviews from three studies of COVID-19 impact in Bihar, India
title Ethical considerations of phone-based interviews from three studies of COVID-19 impact in Bihar, India
title_full Ethical considerations of phone-based interviews from three studies of COVID-19 impact in Bihar, India
title_fullStr Ethical considerations of phone-based interviews from three studies of COVID-19 impact in Bihar, India
title_full_unstemmed Ethical considerations of phone-based interviews from three studies of COVID-19 impact in Bihar, India
title_short Ethical considerations of phone-based interviews from three studies of COVID-19 impact in Bihar, India
title_sort ethical considerations of phone-based interviews from three studies of covid-19 impact in bihar, india
topic Practice
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8375446/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34404691
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005981
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