Disaster Research “Methics”: Ethical and Methodological Considerations of Researching Disaster-Affected Populations

Abstract

How we do research directly affects what we know about the subject matter under study. While the study of disaster events continues to grow, rigorous inquiry on disaster research methodology is limited because it is confounded by the disruption a disaster presents. Yet it is precisely at that point that special methodological problems emerge. The methodological—and inherently ethical—challenges disaster researchers face became apparent to me during my own fieldwork on domestic violence organizations and their recovery trajectory following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. In this article, I explore methodological and ethical issues that lay beneath “studying” people in the wake of disaster events and argue that ethical concerns should have the same, if not greater, primacy as methods; a dual consideration I refer to as “methics.” My findings support this argument and add to the growing chorus advocating for a paradigm shift in disaster research methods.

Keywords

social sciences ethics research methods natural hazards disasters

Introduction

Usually I begin a manuscript about a disaster with a description of the disaster and its magnitude, but words cannot capture the enormity of the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Quantified tallies of losses due to other disasters have topped trillions of dollars (Wallemacq & House, 2018). COVID-19 reflects things we have learned about disaster, but it is different in several important ways. One key difference between it and more acute, localized disasters is that the virus’ tentacles are creeping into every crevice of our lives, and no one is exempt.

My curiosity about the methodological and ethical challenges disaster researchers face in the field (and their overlap) came from my Hurricane Katrina research experience and working closely with a person who lost nearly everything in the ravages of the flood. Trying to rebuild a home and a life while living in a FEMA trailer is hard enough. Adding academic research of the causes of these losses is even harder. It is personal, and all encompassing.

Katrina is one of the most heavily researched disasters in history, yet of all the researchers that have studied it, only a very small percentage are both subject and object, meaning that they were researching an event that they had also experienced and suffered from. Research surrounding COVID-19 may or may not surpass that of Katrina, but one thing is certain. Perhaps for the first time in history, all of us, each and every disaster researcher in the world, will be both subject and object. And this presents us with an opportunity, one that I will argue is important, necessary, and long overdue. As our pioneer disaster researchers taught us, a disaster exposes what is already there, and our methods are not exempt for this conclusion. Right now is the perfect time to look at and truly scrutinize our disaster research methods, specifically because are all affected.

COVID-19 will change our lives and our research in numerous ways that are still unknown and unfolding. Though numbers are emerging on economics, deaths, and other seemingly quantifiable losses, we cannot begin to truly quantify our injuries and costs, or make accurate predictions about long-term recovery because we are still in the midst of this pandemic. I cannot even confidently say what things will look like by the time this special journal issue is put into print (though I am very certain it will be different from how it is now as I write). So perhaps it is more important than ever to acknowledge that this piece is a snapshot in time.

While I have done quick response work in the past where I went to the disaster zone during the emergency period, I got to go home when my research was “finished.” Now I am home doing my research, and while I have every creature comfort imaginable, and home is safe for me, I (like most of us), am quarantined because of COVID-19. My everyday life has drastically changed, and it is undesirable. Normal community functions are completely disrupted, and though many of us do not see the devastation in the ways that our first responders and medical heroes do, we could certainly argue that COVID-19 fits Quarantelli’s (2006) definition of catastrophe and at the same time, presents an opportunity to redefine disaster. Surely we are due for another “what is a disaster?” compilation.

Certainly, social distancing regulations pragmatically change the way we are able to conduct research. During a hurricane, when we do quick response field work and the roads are blocked, there are often ways to get around or get “there” on foot, or we can go back the next day, or find some way of improvising. But the pandemic is everywhere; it is literally in the air. We cannot get around contaminated air and it will not be gone tomorrow.

When we first went on lockdown, I expedited an institutional review board (IRB) approval for an online survey to distribute to traditional college aged students about COVID-19 related things such as hand washing, fear, altruistic behavior, and whether they thought their vote made a difference. After all, that is what disaster researchers do. We hurry as fast as we can to collect the perishable data so we can implement what we learn for the next disaster. Sure, there are methodological shortcomings to online surveys, but I can acknowledge those limitations as usual in the discussion section of my manuscript. Certainly, rapid response disaster research has a long and demonstrated history. I wrote some blogs, was quoted in some newspapers articles having to do with domestic violence, I have compiled dozens and dozens of news articles that offer teachable moments for class and in a sense, I was comfortable in the disaster space, so to speak. And then the fatigue set in. I realized that I am both the subject and object of this one. And so are you. We all are. That is new. At least, it is new for me, and I think probably for many of us.

While the study of disaster events continues to grow, rigorous inquiry on disaster research methodology is limited because it is confounded by the disruption a disaster presents. Yet it is precisely at that point that special methodological problems emerge. The methodological—and inherently ethical—challenges disaster researchers face became apparent to me during my own fieldwork on domestic violence organizations and their recovery trajectory following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The current article is a call or reminder to consult and/or revisit Browne and Peek’s (2014) piece “Beyond the IRB: An ethical toolkit for disaster research,” and it is also a call to reinvigorate our conversations about how we conduct disaster research from abstract idea to research practice.

Browne and Peek (2014) argue that we need to expand to ethical “frame of concern” for disaster research, and they offer us an “ethical toolkit” of wonderfully applicable tools for the field. Louis-Charles et al. (2020) advocate for a justice approach to disaster research. I make a similar argument here, albeit with different language, namely, that we need to continue lifting our conversations and practices of ethics on par with methods, such that we can think of it as “methics.” In this project, I explore methodological and ethical issues that lay beneath “studying” people in the wake of disaster events. Using an inductive, mixed-method qualitative research design, this article describes the methodological and ethical issues disaster researchers face while they are conducting fieldwork.

Literature Review

Research on people has a long history of ethics concerns, and rightfully so, because there have been egregious human rights violations. Social scientists have long recognized and documented both ethical and methodological issues in conducting research on people (Murray, 1987). Ordinarily, researchers take great caution when they are attempting to describe and analyze the lives of named vulnerable populations, such as prisoners and children. In fact, regulations such as the Nuremburg Code and The Common Rule specify ethical considerations for researching human subjects.

Nearly, every discipline that studies people has its own code of ethics. Anthropology and Psychology have had ethical guidelines in place the longest (Murray, 1987). Historical events where human beings have been exploited or harmed in other ways have also generated the need for federal regulations that address issues that emerge in human subjects research (Ausbrooks et al., 2009).

These formal procedures regarding the protection of research participants emerged only after the revelation of several questionable and damaging research practices. A defining event occurred in 1946 when the Nuremburg Trials exposed horrific medical experiments conducted by Nazi doctors. Unfortunately, additional examples of the maltreatment of participants abound. In the Tuskegee Syphilis study, 399 Black men with syphilis were led to believe they were being treated for the disease, when in actuality, the goal was to study the progress of the disease and withhold treatment (Jones, 1981). Stanley Milgram and associates created a laboratory setting with “teachers” (subjects who were duped) and “learners” (confederates of the researcher). When learners failed to correctly learn a word pairing, the researcher instructed the teacher to punish the learner with an increasingly strong electric shock (Milgram, 1963). Although the shock did not really happen, the teachers thought they were shocking the learners and experienced considerable stress, reigniting questions surrounding ethics and deception. These and other human rights violations in research prompted the Commission’s 1978 Belmont Report to establish basic ethical principles for the protection of human subjects: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice (The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1978). These principles have helped guide research for decades.

The Belmont Report and standardized human subjects’ protections with three essential requirements: (a) assurances, (b) institutional review boards, and (c) informed consent. The Belmont Report also includes protections for vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women, differently abled persons, either mentally or physically, prisoners and children (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1978).

The Department of Health and Human Services, and the Food and Drug Administration translated these principles into specific regulations that were adopted in 1991 as the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, a policy that has shaped the course of social science research ever since. Federal regulations require that every institution have an IRB to review all research proposals.

These Human Subjects protocols have addressed some concerns about disaster research but are limited in what they are actually able to do. It is not the purview of IRBs to be able to anticipate all of the potential dilemmas that can emerge in the field.

When the field of emergency management was new, emergency managers were most often perceived as “air raid wardens” who would sound an alert when an attack came from outside the United States (Drabek, 1986; Dynes, 1994; Quarantelli, 1989; Quarantelli & Dynes, 1970; Scanlon, 1992; Wenger, 1985). At the time, the main concern was over nuclear powers, which prompted actual air raid drills, the creation of bomb shelters for protection, and the distinct possibility of threat from the outside.

Assumptions were made about human behavior, and these assumptions prompted the Disaster Research Center to conduct series of studies about human behavior after disaster. Indeed, findings from rapid response deployments in several disciplines point to the importance of rapid response disaster research. These perishable data are valuable and help us understand the social processes at work during disaster. Rapid response studies done by pioneer researchers at the Disaster Research Center helped debunk many myths about human behavior after disaster that Civil Defense had helped to construct. One myth is that when disasters occur, people will panic and engage in any behavior deemed necessary at the moment to facilitate escape. Studies (Auf der Heide, 2004; Drabek, 1986; Dynes, 1994; Quarantelli, 1989, 2008; Quarantelli & Dynes, 1970; Scanlon, 1992; Wenger, 1985) have shown that in typical disaster events, people do not panic, and in fact that the greater issue is fighting what sociologists call “normalcy bias,” where people underestimate the potential dangers. The myth of widespread uncontrollable looting was also discredited through substantial evidence that people behave prosocially following a disaster event (Drabek, 1986; Fischer, 1998; Quarantelli, 1989, 2008; Quarantelli & Dynes, 1970). Recently, however, there is a growing body of evidence revealing that crime, including property crime, interpersonal violence, and fraud, does occur during all phases of disaster (Frailing & Harper, 2017; Van Brown, 2019).

Disaster research is a field where issues are especially pronounced due to the disruption a disaster presents. Yet in disaster research where disaster researchers confront a wide range of ethical and methodological challenges, the resources are lacking. Browne and Peek (2014), Gaillard and Peek (2019), Louis-Charles et al. (2020), and Van Brown (2019) are working to help fill this gap. Researchers must follow their university’s IRB protocol, yet disaster studies as a field lacks an autonomous and unified code of ethics. The methodological (and inherently ethical) challenges that emerge in researching disasters are not new to social science research. Disaster is not a special feature, but there are things about disaster research that are special and unique. Disaster researchers frequently confront high levels of participant vulnerability, particularly during the emergency period immediately following a disaster. The literature on how to ethically navigate this precarious postdisaster terrain is thin, yet disaster researchers are under a tremendous amount of pressure to collect perishable data in the middle of a community-wide crisis. But, how do we know when and if we are in violation or what good practices are if a unified ethics code does not exist?

Because there is no specific code for disaster studies, researchers tend to follow their home discipline’s code of ethics. Given the disruption disaster causes, and the variety of potential dilemmas disaster fieldwork may present, I too argue that the field of disaster studies is worthy of its own code of ethics. The methodological issues I experienced in the field and reified in this research both confirm findings from previous studies (e.g., Browne & Peek, 2014; Gaillard & Peek, 2019) and highlight the fundamental social science research ethical issues that require a paradigm shift in disaster research.

More so than many other specializations or disciplines, disaster research has openly embraced qualitative research. Historically, much disaster research developed out of qualitative research designs (Phillips, 2014). A well-established tradition of qualitative research continues today, linked to major research centers and notable scholars. Disaster researchers rely on qualitative research designs that produce rich insights into how people, organizations, and communities face unanticipated events. The difficult-to-anticipate nature of sudden onset disasters means that traditional quantitative studies may not be feasible. To investigate the complex and rapidly changing environment found in such events requires a more open-ended type of inquiry characterized by inductive approaches. What differentiates qualitative disaster research from more general qualitative studies is the context, particularly in the emergency response time period.

Phillips (2014) briefly discusses disaster research ethics, though acknowledges that ethics pieces on disaster research have surfaced only recently, and mostly in the aftermath of terrorist events. A conference in 2003 discussed ethical issues of concern and recommended ethical protocol. Recognizing that the potential of risk to participants of research postdisaster is largely undocumented, conference participants concluded that nondisaster studies of participants dealing with acute stress “offer evidence that decisional ability in these individuals, as a group, is not significantly compromised” (Collogan et al., 2004, p. 365). Based on similar studies, the conference concluded that people affected by disaster could make rational decisions regarding their participation. Furthermore, conference participants concluded that assuming disaster survivors might be impaired could be potentially stigmatizing (Rosenstein, 2004). Disaster researchers have found similar results, as the majority of those who face disaster respond fairly well psychologically (Norris et al., 2006). Another area of concern focused on individual disaster survivors and communities being overwhelmed by researchers inundating the area. The possibility that the same person may be asked to participate in a research study multiple times could be characterized as exploitation.

The researcher can also consider the benefits of disaster to research participants, like medical and mental health services, gaining insights, helping survivors feeling more empowered, and serving a broader good through advancing science. Benefits to participants have not been empirically substantiated but are presumed to exist in both disaster and nondisaster research. In general, an IRB will weigh such benefits against the risks. Overall, “research participation may upset subjects but it does not traumatize them as a disastrous event would,” and standard IRB protocol should apply to disaster research (Collogan et al., 2004, p. 367).

Disaster researchers Browne and Peek (2014) addressed this gap in disaster methods and ethics literature, when they identified a common set of ethical dilemmas, and proposed a way to address them and the research predicaments disaster research produces. They argue that first, there are reasons to expand the ethical lens in disaster research, and that second, researchers can resolve these ethical issues through use of an “ethical toolkit.”

I share Browne and Peek’s (2014, p. 84) definition of “ethical dilemma” as “situations that raise moral of ethical concerns where there is no obvious, clear-cut resolution.” Many things can create ethical and moral uncertainty. Therefore, those of us taking this standpoint are not just talking about methods, with ethics as an add-on. I propose that we think about our methodologies more as “methics,” where ethical considerations are just as important as the methodologies we employ.

Browne and Peek’s (2014) toolkit is an effective start at creating a standard by which we can measure and hold ourselves accountable, but social science researchers know that we cannot prioritize ethical concerns equally, and that we have to make choices, both in the field, and throughout all stages of the research process. Sometimes, “doing the most good” conflicts with “respecting the rights of another individual.”

Method

This study reports preliminary findings (N = 15) of interviews with social science disaster researchers (tenured or tenure-track faculty members in a social science department), who have or are conducting fieldwork in a disaster-affected area during the emergency period. I also include reflections from my own disaster research experience and informal conversations with disaster researchers. Though my sample size is small and there are other limitations to my approach, my findings highlight the importance of these ongoing and dynamic dilemmas. Participants were asked to take part in a semistructured interview in person or telephone (depending on their geographic location) and asked to discuss their experiences in the field with regard to research methods and ethics.

To further the development of disaster “methics,” which is another way of saying we need to expand our ethical frame of concern (Browne & Peek, 2014) or adopt a justice approach to disaster research (Louis-Charles et al., 2020), I asked disaster researchers questions about the methodological and ethical challenges they have faced in the field. I wanted to know if the challenges they faced were similar to one another, whether they reflected (and even heard of) Browne and Peek’s (2014) ethical toolkit, and if so, what they could say about it. Do they know it well enough to apply it if they choose to? Were they putting that knowledge to use in their own work, and it so, with what results?

Study objectives included: gaining a more in-depth understanding of the special features of disaster research, gaining a better understanding of the level of ethics and methods training and preparation disaster researchers have (or do not have) before entering the field, understanding the specific ethical and methodological issues researchers confronted in their research, learning their opinions on what constitutes an ethical violation in a disaster context, and identifying what the needs are to bolster disaster research methodologies for the integrity of the field. In asking disaster researchers these questions, preliminary data shows that first, not all disaster researchers apply Browne and Peek’s (2014) toolkit, though they continue to confront complicated dilemmas in the field.

Browne and Peek (2014) identified ethical dilemmas they encountered in the field, including participant vulnerability, participant expectations, and reciprocity/giving back. Kendra and Gregory (2019) also discuss access to the disaster site, the responsibility of researchers to the affected community, and participant vulnerability. Louis-Charles et al. (2020) discuss similar challenges in their experiences conducting research in the Caribbean.

In my fieldwork, I experienced similar dilemmas. Yet a framework for how to navigate these dilemmas is lacking. I am choosing to omit direct quotes and discuss findings more generally, as the community studying disasters from a social science perspective is relatively small and the ability to identify a respondent by their quote would constitute its own ethical issue.

Findings

My findings confirm previous research and show that conducting research in the postdisaster context presents unique methodological and ethical challenges, and that disaster researchers are divided on a number of issues, including how these issues could and should be addressed. Furthermore, these challenges are situated within the broader framework of whether a disaster-affected group or population should be considered vulnerable and treated as such. There is a broader ideological conflict about the extent to which an IRB should intervene with rapid response disaster research. The topic of IRB intervention (or not) is polarizing, because many researchers fear that bringing attention to this topic will cause IRB to impose regulations, or even go as far as to stop rapid response research. These researchers cite early disaster research on “typical” events, which found that people who have survived a disaster are not passive victims, nor do they panic, but that they are agents who are capable of making informed decisions. There is strong loyalty to these data because these early findings played an important role in debunking media constructed myths and Civil Defense assumptions about human behavior during disaster. Let me be clear: I am not at all suggesting that we stop rapid response research. My goal is to continue advocating for “methics,” for expanding our ethics “frame of concern,” and for embracing a justice approach to disaster research. I believe we can both embrace these practices and conduct rapid response research.

The Predicaments

Preliminary findings revealed that there is a pattern of distinctive methodological and ethical challenges that are specific to fieldwork in a disaster-affected environment that I argue warrant a more complete merging of methods and ethics, and I further propose we call this fusion “methics.”

Some of the predicaments or quandaries described below confirm what other disaster researchers have found, which I argue points to the importance of these issues (e.g., Browne & Peek, 2014; Gaillard & Peek, 2019; Louis-Charles et al., 2020). They are not mutually exclusive, and their overlap adds to the complexity of navigating them in the field.

Finding People and Taking Versus Giving

The first predicament I discuss is finding people and taking versus giving (what Browne & Peek, 2014; call reciprocity), because it often comes first in the field, because it highlights the overlap of predicaments, and because it also highlights how complicated the challenges are when none are mutually exclusive. When I began the quest of writing my dissertation in which I would conduct preliminary qualitative research, it took me nearly a year to track down a key person in New Orleans who was a gatekeeper of domestic violence contacts. I had to find people and to reconcile the taking versus giving conundrum before I could begin conducting interviews.

Finding people is a “methics” challenge not only because of the exploitation of social capital but also because of the magnitude of the devastation. It takes time, perseverance, determination, gentleness, and perhaps a stubborn refusal to accept no for an answer. After I finally made the connection, convinced her to trust and work with me, got there and sat before her, she began by asking me simply, “What are you going to give back?” I took pause. A long pause. The blank stare on my face must have prompted her to continue, “You’re going to take people’s stories. What are you going to give back to them?” It was one of the most powerful questions I had ever been asked in my role as graduate student and disaster researcher, and one I will never forget.

As researchers, we are responsible for representing our participants’ voice. But what does it look like in disaster research when survivors need basic supplies, like food, water, and/or place to live? Immediately following a disaster, the convergence of supplies and personnel to the affected area is well documented (Fritz & Mathewson, 1956; Kendra & Wachtendorf, 2016). Researchers, too, converge on the scene during rapid response asking people to participate in their research projects, particularly to ask survivors for their stories. Recognizing that the researcher is in fact asking the participant to give something up means that there are power relations involved, and I think raises ethical questions about the researcher’s right to be there, or not. To argue that a researcher intrinsically has the right to be there, I think, privileges the researcher. When there is already a power imbalance, privileging the researcher more only serves to pronounce this power imbalance in even greater favor of the researcher.

When we begin to consider the other predicaments that emerged in my research, like the argument that researchers intrinsically have the right to “be there,” I think these power relations are more palpable. But, by recognizing that there are power relations involved, the researcher can navigate them responsibly, despite the fact that the pressure to get the data and not exceed the grant budget will work against us.

Subject and Object of Research

The second predicament that emerged was the fact that a disaster researcher can be both subject and object of the study. In my research in New Orleans with domestic violence and other nonprofit organizations, one researcher was purely object, meaning they had not experienced the trauma of the disaster event itself. Another researcher was both subject and object, meaning they had both experienced Hurricane Katrina, and were also researching it. Now, all of us who are researching COVID-19-related topics are both subject and object of the research. This represents a unique perspective that can certainly yield useful findings but does require an acknowledgement of the researcher’s standpoint in a new way. The question of objectivity buoys to the surface as well; amid our fatigue, emotional rollercoasters, constant uncertainty, and the range of thoughts and emotions we are all experiencing as we try to process this global crisis, we must consider what all that does to objectivity?

Individual and Collective Trauma

Understanding the complexities of how survivors of disaster separate their own experiences amid the community-wide chaos, and understanding that these experiences can be ongoing without discrete end points, presents both the third and fourth predicaments.

Experiencing disaster is both individual and collective. That is, a person experiences a disaster event at the individual level. They may have lost loved ones, property, personal belongings, and so on, but in addition, they experience the trauma collectively at the community or neighborhood level. They may even have completely lost their social networks and feelings of community because of the devastation. These losses are multilayered, and require a level of awareness to navigate respectfully, and ethically. The Buffalo Creek flood provides an excellent example of the significance of collective trauma and loss. The Appalachian community not only experienced individual losses, they experienced a loss of communality, which appeared to be something categorically more than loss of community (Erikson, 1976).

The fact that these losses can be ongoing is its own challenge. After the initial personal and community losses, there can be an onslaught of continued challenges in an extended disaster event (e.g., Gill & Ritchie, 2020). We are seeing this now as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and continues to strain our personal, familial, community, governmental, and global systems.

Sampling

Determining reliable, valid and generalizable data in a postdisaster community, in other words, finding the numbers, is an immense challenge and a fifth predicament. Sampling also is a prime example of why we need a “methics” approach. In the United States, Hurricane Katrina caused the largest diaspora we have yet seen following a disaster event. Those who were unable to evacuate have no choice but to enter a community-wide shelter like the Superdome or the Convention Center. Is it appropriate to enter a community-wide shelter and ask for research participants? Some argue that doing so may interfere with first responder work (Louis-Charles et al., 2020), while others argue any interference can be easily mitigated (Kendra & Gregory, 2019). How do we identify populations and collect data when such a large percentage of the population evacuated the city? If it is not appropriate at the outset, does it ever become inappropriate to enter a community-wide shelter and ask people to participate in a research project? I ague that embracing a “methics” approach in this scenario is not a given.

If we can get past the above dilemmas and find people, then we can ask, are those people in a position to participate? Many argue that disaster survivors should decide whether they participate. A justice or “methics” approach argues that we should reconsider even asking.

If researchers can even find numbers to count, those numbers provide only a snapshot in time. Therefore, researchers can continue asking what the value of their participation is. Yes, they have provided a solid foundation for the field of disaster studies, but they may only be useful to the researcher, not the participant. To say that all research is useful, I argue, is problematic. How can researchers help make that snapshot useful for participants?

Researcher Safety

Another pragmatic predicament is the safety of the researcher. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, a disaster-affected area can be dangerous. I do not want to dismiss that outsiders converging to a disaster zone to conduct research often enjoy the privilege of staying in a hotel room, having a per diem food allowance, and a plane ticket back home. However, the dynamics of a disaster-affected area can present a very precarious and possibly even dangerous environment. Beyond the challenges to physical safety, there are psychological risks as well. Participant emotions can be extreme, seeing immense devastation and death can be difficult, and a “green” graduate student may not be prepared for this, or have the tools to process it. More preparation for the field would benefit all.

Ideological Predicaments/Quandaries

My findings highlight that the ethical dilemmas that emerge in the field are worthy of further discussion and inquiry. These ideological conflicts are important to acknowledge because how we think about research impacts how we actually conduct research.

Some disaster researchers argue that all research helps, and that researchers inherently have a “right” to be there simply because they are researchers (e.g., Kendra & Gregory, 2019). Other disaster researchers disagree and counter this standpoint by arguing that disaster research needs a unified code of conduct, which disaster survivors may qualify as vulnerable, and that research ethics are just as important as research methods.

Before the pragmatic issues of doing research were discussed, the debate over this “right” emerged. Those in this camp argue that all research is good, and that all research leads to more knowledge and greater understanding. This camp further believes that researchers have an inherent right, and in fact a duty, to study wherever our field of inquiry takes us, and to publish those findings (Kendra & Gregory, 2019). I think we must be very careful with this argument because there is power and privilege embedded in it. Of course I like to think that my research is good, and that it makes important contributions. But is that true? And who gets to decide? Certainly, I am not excused from this conversation.

The other camp maintains that no, researchers do not intrinsically have a right to be at a disaster site, because they run the risk of exploiting survivors. This camp sees such heavy researcher convergence as an intrusion and disrespectful to the affected population. This side points to the debate around whether disaster survivors are vulnerable and argues that instead of talking above and about the populations we are researching, we need to be talking with them. They argue that there is a right way to conduct research, and importantly, that there also is a wrong way. They further argue that we should be concerned with how we know what we know, how we apply it, and whether we have any “right” to know it in the first place.

The issue of whether disaster-affected populations are vulnerable is hot button. Prior to Katrina, it was determined that disaster-affected populations are not legally vulnerable. And, there is an extensive body of research that provides empirical evidence to debunk the claim that disaster survivors panic, that disaster-affected people lose all abilities to make decisions, and that survivors basically lose their agency (Drabek, 1986; Dynes, 1994; Quarantelli, 1989; Quarantelli & Dynes, 1970; Scanlon, 1992; Wenger, 1985). Hurricane Katrina reignited this discussion because the storm exposed such chronic and severe social problems and it is one of the most compelling social justice stories of our time. The storm’s catastrophic magnitude caused both individual and collective trauma that researchers are still trying to measure. As Collogan et al. (2004) point out, survivors of disaster experience a range of emotions and responses we do not yet fully understand. They also maintain that there are some cases where the disaster has caused so much damage, both to the individual and the community, that potential respondents may not be in the best position to decide to participate in a research study.

Discussion

The authors in this issue, especially Louis-Charles et al. (2020), Peek et al. (2020) and myself, are advocating for a paradigm shift in disaster research. On one hand, we are united in this quest. Certainly, the disaster researchers who believe they intrinsically have the right to be there do not want to do any harm at all. Yet those in favor of a paradigm shift in disaster research still sit on the periphery, as the disagreements about these dilemmas function to thwart a full paradigm shift.

Recently, Gaillard and Peek (2019) published a piece advocating for a paradigm shift in disaster research, which includes an argument for creating a code of conduct for disaster research. I agree with their argument and believe this journal issue underscores the importance of such a shift. Researchers are not always welcome in a disaster-affected area. In the absence of a unified code of conduct and better researcher self-regulation, countries have imposed policies to thwart the potentially overwhelming number of disaster researchers converging to the scene, and in particular, researchers who grab and go (Mukherji et al., 2014). In 2011, after the Christchurch earthquake, New Zealand put a moratorium on social science research, preventing outside researchers from entering the country (Beaven et al., 2016). The Indonesian government has implemented a special visa that outside researchers must acquire before entering the country and conducting research. Yet rapid response research has helped by leading to improvements in disaster planning and response, so we must continue having conversations and seek to reconcile the disagreement that stricter university protocols or a universal code of conduct could violate researchers’ rights as we study disaster-affected populations. The standpoint that researchers have the right to be there is problematic because it exacerbates an already imbalanced relationship. It is not contributing to moral panic or violating anyone’s constitutional (or other) rights to argue that disaster researchers embrace a “methics” approach. On the contrary, it shows a determination to do better, for our participants, our field, and ourselves. Is it harder? Perhaps it is, but perhaps this should be the “right” we are most concerned with. It is worthwhile to consider creating a code of conduct, requiring training in cultural competence, and limiting the number of researchers that may converge to a disaster zone (Wu et al., 2020). Failing to challenge the ideology that denies the complete relevance of ethics to science comprises very important ethical considerations and practices (Rollins, 2010).

One of the many challenges in achieving a justice approach to postdisaster fieldwork (Louis-Charles et al., 2020), or in expanding our ethics frame of concern (Browne & Peek, 2014), or in shifting to methics where methods and ethics are equal considerations (Van Brown, 2019) is the multidisciplinary nature of disaster studies. As both Peek et al. (2020) and Aguirre and El-Tawil (2020) demonstrate, disaster studies span numerous disciplines and thousands of researchers. We have a great deal of people lacking a unified code of ethics, and this crystallizes the need for a paradigm shift.

Either implicitly, explicitly, or both, the articles in this issue emphasize the importance of having an international entity create a code of conduct for all of us in order to capture the global nature of these ethical dilemmas. Gaillard and Peek (2019) suggest that the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction could put forward a research driven ethical code of conduct. Such a code would not be a restriction, but instead, a way we can unite and make our research even better. With COVID-19, we are likely to have new ethical dilemmas, and we do not yet fully know what an ethical breach is in a COVID-19 world, or a post-COVID-19 world. It is certainly an opportunity for such a paradigm shift in our disaster research methods to occur.

Conclusion

I will continue to argue for disaster research “methics,” and to further these debates and conversations, because research is not an all or nothing enterprise. Gaillard and Peek (2019), Browne and Peek (2014), Louis-Charles et al. (2020), and others have begun to pave the way and I want to make sure we stay on the road. Asking these questions and understanding researchers’ ethical and methodological dilemmas can lead to additional tools, implementation of existing tools, and perhaps even a best “methics” practice for disaster researchers that can be tested. Once best practices are known and accepted, they can then be applied and taught so that we and future generations of disaster researchers can do better, and better is a unifying force. It is something that both sides can support, as there is little debate that better research leads to better outcomes.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Bethany L. Van Brown earned her doctoral degree in Sociology from the University of Delaware, and her MA in Applied Sociology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. While studying at the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center, she had the opportunity to work on projects focused on the September 11^th terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. This experience as a research assistant at the Disaster Research Center helped her develop and cultivate a passion for collaborative and interdisciplinary research. Her fieldwork in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina led her to write her dissertation on domestic violence organizations and their recovery trajectory post-disaster. Since completing her dissertation, she continues to research human behavior during disasters, including domestic violence, drug use and social unrest. The common thread that unites her research is working to understand how we can make communities stronger so they are better able to resist a wide range of social problems.

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