Community-based participatory research in rural African contexts: Ethico-cultural considerations and lessons from Ghana
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COMMENTARY
Open Access
Community-based participatory research in rural African contexts: Ethico-cultural considerations and lessons from Ghana Richard Appiah Correspondence: [email protected]. gh; [email protected] College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana
Abstract Researchers conducting community-based participatory research (CBPR) with vulnerable populations in rural African settings are confronted with distinctive ethical and cultural challenges due to the community context of their research, their methods of investigation, and the implications of their findings for populations. Ethical considerations such as informed consent, the protection of privacy and confidentiality, and relationships between researchers and participants take on greater complexity and have implications beyond the individual research participant. Drawing on careful reflections of experiences from conducting mental health promotion intervention research using the CBPR approach and multimethods in resource-poor rural communities in Ghana, we examine a range of ethico-cultural issues associated with community-based group intervention research in rural remote settings of Ghana. We offer suggestions to help researchers to envision and manage these complexities in a more appropriate way. Approaches aimed to promote relationships, fairness, respect, and cultural harmony between researchers and study participants are outlined. We urge prospective researchers to carefully explore and respect the cultural values and practices of community members and observe locally-defined ethical values and principles when conducting CBPRs in rural African settings to minimise ethics dumping and safeguard the integrity of their research. Keywords: Community-based participatory research, Ethical and cultural considerations, Rural Africa, Intervention research, Ghana
Background Approximately 60% of the over 1.216 billion people in Africa reside in rural communities [1]. A wealth of research demonstrates that residents of rural, low-resource communities are burdened by distinct experiences and circumstances which are recognisably different in nature and form from those experienced by their urban counterparts. Comparatively, in rural and remote settings in Ghana [2], Kenya [3], Nigeria [4], South Africa [5], and Zambia [6], adults experience higher levels of stress than their urban counterparts and have less access to medical, educational, and social © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article
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