Researching social work practice ethically and developing ethical researchers

Social work research is an ethically significant activity in that both the processes and the outcomes have ethical ramifications for those involved. This paper discusses the ethically important moments in a multi-agency evaluation carried out by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers. It shows how the formal ethical approval process was of some benefit but was expensive, time-consuming and of limited utility when some unexpected ethical issues needed to be considered at a later stage of the project. The paper stresses the importance of developing the identity of an ethical researcher during a research project and provides suggestions of strategies to achieve this for both researchers and partners. A social work researcher should be able to engage with ethical issues during research projects without becoming restricted to discussions of bureaucratic processes.