DFM Guideline: Ethics handbook

This document provides guidelines for conducting social research following the standards of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), as set out in the Tri-Council Policy on Ethics. Models are provided for recruitment, informed consent, data collection, and dissemination documents.

Introduction: Canada’s standard for research ethics

As the Dried Fish Matters project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), we are expected to follow the same rigorous standard of ethics that applies to all Canadian researchers.

This standard is set out in a document called the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS2).

Each of the coordinators of our eight local research teams is required to complete the online tutorial for TCPS2 (https://tcps2core.ca/) and ensure that the other team members follow the policies and procedures introduced there.

In turn, Principal Investigator Dr. Derek Johnson is responsible for monitoring compliance with the TCPS2 and reporting to SSHRC.

There are three core principles to Canada’s research ethics approach:

• Respect for Persons
• Concern for Welfare
• Justice

Respect for persons

The principle of Respect for Persons recognizes the intrinsic value of human beings and the respect and consideration that they are due.

This principle is reflected in the requirement to seek participants’ free, informed, and ongoing consent.

Concern for welfare

The principle of Concern for Welfare recognizes the importance of a person’s physical, mental, and spiritual health, as well as their physical, economic and social circumstances.

This principle is reflected in the requirement to minimize risk to participants, including risk of stigmatization, discrimination or damage to reputation.

Concern for Welfare is also reflected in the requirement to maintain privacy and ensure that research participants are able to control information about themselves.

Justice

The principle of Justice refers to the obligation to treat people fairly and equitably.

Fairness entails treating all people with equal respect and concern. Equity requires distributing the benefits and burdens of research participation in such a way that no group is unduly burdened by the harms of research or denied the benefits of the knowledge generated from it.

This principle is reflected in the requirement of equitable participation. Participation should be based on inclusion criteria that are justified by the research question.

Justice is also reflected in the requirement to treat vulnerable groups with special attention to ensure that they are fairly represented in and by the research.

Ethics review

Before any component of our research can be undertaken, we must submit to a thorough and strict review by the Ethics Review Board at the University of Manitoba, which operates in compliance with the TCPS2 standard.

This review includes a full examination of the following elements:

• Who will participate in the study, and how we will recruit them.
• How we intend to maintain the privacy of participants.
• How we will collect, access, create, store, and share data in a secure and appropriate way.
• How we will obtain and document informed consent from all participants.
• How we will communicate the findings from our research to participants.
• What we will do to minimize risks and maximize benefits for participants, particularly those in vulnerable groups.
• How we will obtain appropriate approvals from other institutions, including local research organizations and community groups.

Recruiting participants

The research will involve actors representing four distinct segments of the dried fish value chain: fishers, processors, traders, and retailers.

We expect that each of the eight research teams within the Dried Fish Matters project might interview approximately 25 individuals from each category of actors, typically distributed across two or more sites for each value chain segment.

This research project will use two forms of recruitment, involving cluster sampling and snowball sampling.

Direct recruitment (cluster sampling)

You will make initial contact with most participants through single-stage cluster sampling. This means that you will select a number of sites that encompass the full diversity of people and activities in each segment, then attempt to interview as many people as possible within each of those sites.

To do this, you will:

1. Develop a sample of known wholesale markets, fisheries, and processing sites in your country, working in consultation with local partner organizations (ministry officials, producer co-operatives, etc.).
2. During fieldwork in each of the selected sites, directly approach all actors who meet the recruitment criteria at their places of work. Continue research until data saturation is achieved – that is, the point when you don’t learn new information from additional interviews.

Although members of partner organizations should contribute to identifying the cluster sites, only trained field researchers may be directly involved in the recruitment of participants. This is to avoid people feeling pressured to participate due to the presence of people of authority.

In some sites, the project research teams include members of government agencies or non-governmental groups that have standing relationships with fisher/processor communities. In such cases, field researchers and recruiters should be instructed to make clear that willingness to participate in the research will not influence any aspect of these ongoing relationships (i.e., no specific benefits will be offered to those who participate, and those who decline to participate will not be treated adversely).

It can be helpful to use a sampling frame to ensure that the interviewees are sufficiently representative of the overall population in each community. This is a list of social criteria that you want to cover. For example:

• age (older and younger people)
• gender (men and women)
• caste/ethnicity (people of different groups, including minorities)
• social class (labourers and business owners/investors)
• place of origin (local people, internal migrants, and external migrants)

As the full characteristics of each community are not necessarily known in advance, the sampling frame will need to be developed in each site based on information about the community collected in the initial scoping / exploratory interviews.

Potential participants should be recruited either through a written invitation or an oral recruitment script.

Each research team will need to develop its own recruitment materials, with language appropriate to the context in which people are being invited (e.g., email, formal letter, telephone contact, direct oral recruitment).

Our Sample oral recruitment script shows a minimal script for in-person, oral recruitment. Note that the participant is told up-front what their expected commitment would be and is given the option to decline participating. The researcher asks if the individual would be interested in learning more – the actual agreement to participate in the study would come later, after the participant has learned more details.

Referrals (snowball sampling)

Snowball sampling, or referrals by existing participants, can be used in order to gain access to geographically dispersed actors – notably retailers, small-scale merchants, and isolated processors.

We are not allowed to collect personal information about people, including names and contact details, without their consent. As a result, we cannot ask for people’s contact information directly. We can, however, ask others to convey an invitation to participate in the study, such that the potential participant initiates the contact with us.

The box below shows a sample recruitment card that can be given to participants in the study, with the request that they pass it along to others who might be interested in contributing to the research. The recruitment card provides the name and purpose of the study and the contact information for the researcher, which may be given directly to referrals or communicated to them orally (e.g., by telephone). Referred participants who are willing to establish contact with the researcher must indicate their consent by calling the researcher directly or by sending an SMS text message to the researcher indicating how they are willing to be contacted.

Such a card, or a poster with the same information, could also be posted or set out in a public space.

Please see the sample poster.

Free, informed, and ongoing consent

Informed consent means being able to choose whether or not to participate in the research based on a full understanding of the purpose of the research, what it involves, and its foreseeable risks and potential benefits, both to the participant and to others.

Free consent means being able to choose whether or not to participate in the research without feeling pressure or coercion. For example, participants must not be afraid of alienating people in positions of authority, such as professional or personal caregivers, researchers, leaders, larger groups, or a community to which they belong.

Ongoing consent means being able to change one’s mind about participation at any stage of the research project. All participants have the right to withdraw from the research at any time. They also have the right to learn about any changes in the study that might affect their decision to participate.

The consent form

As noted above, participants must be given enough information about the project to make an informed choice about whether or not to participate. They must also indicate that they understand the potential risks and benefits.

We have prepared a general consent form that is approved for use by all research teams.

Children and assent

As the participation of minors is widespread in the dried fish economy, we expect that children will be involved to some degree in interaction with our researchers, and their activities should be acknowledged in field notes where applicable.

The parents or legal guardians of children must be asked to authorize any collection of information about children in their custody.

Special care must be taken to ensure that personally identifiable information concerning children is never recorded in written field notes. Children should not be photographed other than in public settings in which there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

A special assent form must be completed with children before they are included in the research. This plain-language document is a tool to ensure that children themselves agree to participate in the research. The child assent form and the consent form (for parents) must both be completed.

Please see the sample assent form.

Photographs and video

The collection of photographs and short video clips is an integral part of the research process. By collecting images of everyday activities related to dried fish processing, storage, sale, and consumption, we will be able to conduct a comparative analysis of dried fish value chains that builds on concrete evidence. Such documentation is difficult to capture consistently through interviews and fieldnotes, particularly when involving many fieldworkers across multiple sites.

It is important, however, to ensure that participants are able to:

• Understand the uses to which the images may be put
• Consent to be photographed (and decline if they wish)
• Review photographs or video clips after they have been taken

Some observational activities or audiovisual/photographic data collection may occur in public spaces (e.g., open-air markets) in which there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. If known individuals are observed in these settings they must not be identified or linked to identifiable information without their prior consent.

Compensation for participating

Participants may be given small gifts in appreciation of their participation in the study, valued at the equivalent of $5 or less (e.g., mobile telephone credits, LED flashlights). These gifts should not be of a sufficient value to be considered an incentive to participate, but may help to acknowledge the time and effort contributed by research participants.

Participants in public stakeholder meetings may be offered small items marked with the Dried Fish Matters project logo, such as a tote bag, notebook, or similar. Such items should generally not be distributed to interview participants, however, insofar as doing so could compromise their anonymity.

Vulnerable groups

Some low-caste/low-status or migrant individuals and groups may be involved in the research. More generally, many of the fishers and dried fish processors to be recruited are expected to be from economically vulnerable groups.

Potentially vulnerable participants must not be recruited by researchers who are in positions of relative power or over those participants, or when accompanied by individuals in positions of authority (e.g., local officials, employers, or community leaders). Where appropriate, recruitment can be undertaken through the intermediary of partners in each site who are of a similar social background as the individuals being recruited.

Participation in the research must always be voluntary, as stated explicitly in the recruitment and informed consent process. Field researchers and recruiters should be trained to respond non-coercively when presented with cues of hesitation about participating. Field researchers have a responsibility to ensure that participants fully understand that they are under no obligation to participate in the research, that they are free to decline answering specific questions, and that they are free to withdraw from the research at any time.

A large pool of potential research participants should be established where appropriate during the sampling process, so as to reduce pressure on researchers to recruit individuals who may not wish to be included.

Other approvals

Formal permission should be obtained from village heads or similar authorities for all community-based research.

Similarly, prior to conducting research in shared settings such as markets or fish processing centres, consent should be obtained from the site owners/managers or other appropriate organizational authorities.

A formal letter of introduction may to be sent to each organization or community as appropriate. This letter should outline the goals of the Dried Fish Matters project, the research methods, number and type of anticipated participants, and questions to be investigated.

Withdrawing from the study

Participants must be informed of their right to withdraw during the consent process.

Participants may state their wish to withdraw at any point during an interview or observation activity. If this occurs, and if the participant requests that data collected from them up to that point not be used, the research materials (recording or notes) must be destroyed immediately, in the presence of the participant.

Participants should be given the contact details of the supervising researcher and Principal Investigator, either of whom may be contacted within two weeks of the conclusion of the interview to retract information provided to the field researcher.

The Dried Fish Matters project is designed as a multi-stage research process. Participants may be informed of the possibility of being invited to participate in a subsequent stage of the research, but should be told that their participation in the scoping research does not imply any expectation that they will remain involved in any follow-up studies. Informed consent for each research activity to be conducted by this project will be taken as a distinct and separate process.

Debriefing

If all goes well, you will conduct a successful interview with each participant!

At the end of the interview, you should debrief by asking if the participant has any questions or concerns.

This is also a time to complete the final sections of the consent form, indicating whether the participant wishes to be contacted for follow-up research or to obtain a summary of the results.

Please see the sample debriefing script.

Maximizing benefits

People who participate in the research have the right to benefit from their contributions.

The strongest benefits to participants will be collective rather than individual. As there are currently almost no policy measures that directly address dried fish value chains in South and South-East Asia, this research will provide evidence and analysis supporting efforts to address the needs of fishers, processors, traders, and retailers in the dried fish sector. The second stage of this research will involve pilot interventions in areas such as food security, health, and sustainable livelihoods. The findings from the scoping research described in this protocol will directly inform the design of those interventions.

A direct benefit to some participants and their collaborators will be their potential to take part in research and policy networks that address the dried fish value chain, as being established within the scope of the Dried Fish Matters partnership.

Minimizing risk

As this project is intended to document vulnerabilities in the dried fish sector, participants will primarily be put at risk if we publish information concerning unsafe or illegal practices. This could facilitate legal or enforcement responses that target identifiable individuals, or could be generally to the detriment of small-scale fishers and processors.

Unsafe or illegal activities that we might observe include:

• the use of non-food grade pesticides in fish drying
• the use of child or illegal migrant labour in fishing and processing, and
• unreported fish catch (including fishing of restricted species or in restricted areas).

We have not included direct questions on food safety and legality in our interview guides. You should, however, take note of direct observations in these areas -- such as the type of chemical treatments used in fish processing, for instance, or the composition of a work group -- without including identifying information in the notes. These observations will serve as the basis for proposing development interventions in a later stage of the project.

The major risk factors and mitigation strategies are listed below.

Economic risks

• Public knowledge of poor handling of fish at some landing sites may negatively impact sales to export companies at those sites.
• Public knowledge of poor-quality or unhygienic/unsafe dried fish products may negatively impact domestic sales.
• Publication of findings indicating that fish producers do not adhere to HACCP regulations may indirectly result in penalties or decertification.
• Policy recommendations targeting price-fixing or oligopsony conditions that depress wholesale fish prices can be expected to result in reduced income for wholesalers, at least in the short term.
• Policy recommendations or interventions targeting exploitative labour conditions may disrupt the livelihoods of some small-scale producers.

Political risks

• Publication of evidence that specific curing or drying methods are unsanitary or unsafe may result in some current practices being banned, without viable alternatives being available to processors.

Social risks

• Publication of evidence of socio-economic inequalities or nepotism in government assistance programs may fuel tensions between communities, particularly if there is a perceived ethnic dimension to the inequalities (e.g., tensions among Tamil/Sinhalese communities in Sri Lanka).

Emotional risks

• Discussion of economic challenges, social inequalities, and vulnerabilities experienced in the dried fish sector may prompt psychological stress among some participants, particularly if the issues addressed seem unresolvable.
• Questions addressing health, sanitation, and safety may be taken as invasive or hostile by some participants.

Legal risks

• Publication of evidence concerning illegal practices in the dried fish sector may prompt enforcement responses that could threaten the livelihoods of some actors in the immediate term.

Mitigation strategies

Inform

Provide an explicit statement of the project’s transformative goals

Exposing and challenging unjust or exploitative practices may be disruptive to those who benefit from them, but necessary to achieve social justice aims. The project's commitment to supporting transformative change in the dried fish value chain should be discussed openly with participants during the recruitment and informed consent stage.

Actors who stand to be affected negatively by policy changes or interventions proposed on the basis of this research need to be consulted, and their voices included in the research, whenever possible.

Anonymize

Maintain anonymity of personally identifiable data

Personally identifiable information about individuals should not be stored alongside research data.

The main exception to this policy would be cases of public figures or individuals who explicitly request to be identified by name.

Where disclosure of research findings presents a significant risk of causing harm to groups or communities, which cannot be reliably mitigated by other means, the data should further be anonymized at the national or regional level (i.e., so that specific communities or countries cannot be identified, even using indirect information).

Embargo

Implement a publication embargo on sensitive findings

Individual research participants who may be put at risk by the publication of critical findings must be given time to address the issue prior to the occurrence of legal or economic penalties (e.g., in cases of HACCP non-compliance among export-oriented producers).

Sensitive findings of a more general nature should be communicated initially to partner stakeholder groups. Each Research Team should develop an acceptable method and timeframe for handling public and scholarly disclosure in a way that allows stakeholders to formulate an appropriate response.

Mobilize

Disseminate vulnerability-reduction measures as part of knowledge mobilization activities

At the conclusion of the study, Research Teams are expected to disseminate findings to participants in a format that highlights vulnerability-reduction strategies.

Where appropriate, some Research Teams may organize community workshops that highlight problems and propose known, low-cost solutions (e.g., pesticide alternatives).

Intervene

Develop proactive policy and development interventions

Action will be taken within Dried Fish Matters to address problems identified through targeted development or policy interventions, as planned in the second phase of the project (2021-2025).

Local researchers should actively network with those who can address these issues with the goal of identifying concrete solutions, and will be expected to address these elements in depth in their reporting.

Privacy and confidentiality

Please review the different types of information researchers may seek to collect, use, share and access based on the TCPS2.

Directly identifying information – the information identifies a specific individual through direct identifiers (e.g., name, social insurance number, personal health number).

Indirectly identifying information – the information can reasonably be expected to identify an individual through a combination of indirect identifiers (e.g., date of birth, place of residence or unique personal characteristic).

Coded information – direct identifiers are removed from the information and replaced with a code. Depending on access to the code, it may be possible to re-identify specific participants (e.g., the principal investigator retains a list that links the participants’ code names with their actual name so data can be re-linked if necessary).

Anonymized information – the information is irrevocably stripped of direct identifiers, a code is not kept to allow future re-linkage, and risk of re-identification of individuals from remaining indirect identifiers is low or very low.

Anonymous information – the information never had identifiers associated with it (e.g., anonymous surveys) and risk of identification of individuals is low or very low.

Recording of participant names and codes

Insofar as data will be collected primarily through face-to-face interviews and observational activities, the identity of each participant will inevitably be known to the field researcher. Field researchers should assign pseudonyms or codes to all participants in written notes, so as to prevent the identities of those participants becoming known to others.

Consent forms, which will link codes with participant identities and contact details, should be completed electronically using password-protected devices (mobile telephone, tablet, or laptop computer). In this way, participants cannot be identified if the researcher’s materials are lost, stolen, or confiscated.

Participant names and contact details should only be accessed by individuals authorized by the research team coordinator for purposes to which participants have consented, notably:

• arranging follow-up research
• sending a summary of the research results

Participants' real names, contact details, and indirectly identifying demographic details (age, marital status, etc.) may only be recorded with participants' consent.

Privacy during interviews

Some interviews will be held in homogeneous group settings. In these cases all participants should be informed, prior to the interview, that the identities of other participants must remain confidential. Participants should also be encouraged to refrain from disclosing private information during the interview.

Unstructured in situ interviews and participant observation sessions are generally expected to take place in non-private workplace settings. Information of a sensitive nature should not be discussed in public settings.

We anticipate that in many sites it will be difficult to find truly private locations to conduct interviews with research participants, given the shared nature of local homes and workplaces. Field researchers should make every attempt to conduct interviews in reasonably private, low-traffic areas. Nonetheless, we have indicated on the informed consent form that participants are able to choose the interview location, keeping in mind that any comments they offer must be made in awareness of the setting, which may not offer a complete degree of privacy.

Managing data

Each field researcher must sign an Oath of Confidentiality, promising not to disclose personally identifiable information without the consent of research participants.

Please see the sample oath of confidentiality.

Semi-structured interviews and field observation

Interviews and fieldnotes contain coded information (interview) and indirectly identifying information (demographic section).

At the end of each field research session, the electronic consent / identity forms should be loaded onto a computer managed by the team coordinator and stored on disk in a secure location, then erased from the original devices.

Information from verbal interactions with participants or observations of their activities may be recorded by hand on loose-leaf forms in binders. Once a form has been filled, the field researcher can put it away inside a closed bag or backpack, and only carry introduction letters and empty forms in their hands. This method will reduce scrutiny and the possibility of document loss.

The completed handwritten notes should be redacted if necessary on return from the field, then scanned and stored in digital format alongside typed summaries.

All consent forms or other documents that link participants' names and identifiers must be destroyed at the conclusion of the research project.

Anonymized digital records must be stored in a database made accessible to the public and other researchers through the project web site, in addition to being archived through the University of Manitoba institutional repository within two years of data collection.

Our project will make use of a shared qualitative data analysis tool. We expect that the software will be configured to store all research data on a secure server, to be managed centrally by the project team at the University of Manitoba. Each research team should maintain a local copy of the database and source media files (images, video clips, scanned fieldnotes) on password-protected disk storage.

Photography / audiovisual recordings

Photographs and video clips present directly or indirectly identifying information about participants.

Photographs or short video clips should initially be taken with a password-protected mobile telephone camera, then will be uploaded as soon as practical to a secure networked storage and deleted from the original device.

Photographs or video recordings taken in public settings may be kept indefinitely.

Visual records of activities in public settings should be stored indefinitely in fulfillment of our long-term data archival and reuse strategy. In compliance with the SSHRC Research Data Archiving Policy, all non-sensitive research data generated by this project must be preserved and made available for use by others.

Our research sites will include both public and private locations:

• Public locations will include beaches on which fish are laid out to dry, open-air fish markets, or streets containing dried fish vendor kiosks and the like. No special permissions are needed to take photographs or recordings in public locations, so long as normal expectations of privacy are not violated.
• Non-public locations will include fishing vessels, private courtyards in which fish are salted or dried by small-scale processors, warehouses, and supermarkets. In non-public locations, photographs and video recordings will only be taken with the consent of the site owner. If individuals will be identifiably photographed (i.e., outside of a large group setting), written consent to be photographed will be obtained from those individuals.

In case of images that are taken in non-public locations and that are determined to portray vulnerable individuals or sensitive activities (e.g., illegal catch), the project coordinator should ensure that identifiable data (such as GPS coordinates and date) are stripped from the photographs and that the faces of identifiable individuals are blurred. Original images should be kept securely then destroyed at the conclusion of the project (February 2026). All redacted photographs may be permanently archived publicly alongside field notes and summaries.

Blurring of faces in photographs can be accomplished using the Google Cloud Vision tool, which processes images online but does not store permanent copies of those images. Where necessary, face and object blurring in video clips that we wish to publish online may be accomplished using the YouTube Blur Faces tool (original uploaded videos should be overwritten). The Research Coordinator can provide guidance in the use of these tools.

Data protection

It is important to consider what might happen if the wrong person obtains access to the field data.

As only anonymized data will be stored and stored and disseminated among project researchers for qualitative analysis (coding), no specific risks are associated with access to the research dataset.

Our interviews, however, will include indirectly identifying information, notably as reflected in the demographic section at the beginning (gender, location, age, religion, caste/ethnicity, etc.). This demographic information will be used to analyze the experiences of different actors within the dried fish economy in relation to general social categories such as age, gender, religion, caste, and ethnicity. Categories such as religion and caste are particularly significant in shaping communities that engage in distinct sets of economic activities, while age and gender create different standpoints within those communities.

As with the consent form, field researchers should record identifying information about each participant using a dedicated form on a password-protected laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Feedback and dissemination of results

Steps should be taken to provide participants with a brief, non-technical summary of research results as soon as possible after the data collection phase of the study is completed should they want it.

A plain-language report should be prepared by each local Research Team alongside the Technical Report outlining their findings from the scoping research. This will normally be produced within six to eight months of the completion of the data collection phase. As indicated on the informed consent form, copies of the summary report will be distributed to collaborating organizations in each site or community, and may also be sent to a specific postal or email address as directed by the participant.

Non-technical results will also need to be made available in local languages on the project website, in formats designed to be accessible on mobile devices.

Published outputs

Research outputs

Information provided by participants may be used in a variety of forms. It is important that the expected nature of these outputs be made clear to participants. These can include:

• Academic conference presentations, articles, or book chapters
• Technical reports for researchers and policymakers
• Non-technical summaries for the general public
• Policy briefs, proposals for follow-up interventions or research initiatives
• Broadcast or text interviews
• Online databases and websites
• Workshops and community events (knowledge mobilization in your community)

Referring to participants in publications

When providing quotes or ethnographic descriptions, participants should be identified using pseudonyms and occupational/regional descriptors (e.g., “Ayaan, a dried fish seller at a coastal market in South India”). Group interview results should be reported by group, rather than by individual.

Quantitative data may be presented in aggregated tabular form, linked to specific sites and/or activities, but should not contain indicators that would permit the identification of individual participants.