Tadele, Getnet http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0784-6140
Amde, Woldekidan Kifle
Funding for this research was provided by:
Research Council of Norway ([grant ID: 248159])
Article History
Received: 22 March 2019
Accepted: 27 May 2019
First Online: 11 June 2019
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: The social and political sensitivity of the issue have made getting ethical clearance for the research difficult in Ethiopia. One of the challenges in this regard is the absence of an Institutional Review Board for social science research in the country. The National Research Ethics Committee and the IRB at the College of Health Sciences are the other institutions mandated to issue ethical clearance, often for non-social science research. However, these institutions would not have approved such a research judging from past negative experience of the first author’s application for ethical approval on research with people in same sex sexual relationship, and deeply entrenched heteronormativity in the institutions and among members of the ethics committees.The researchers thus put in place multiple mechanisms to conduct the study following proper ethical principles of autonomy, justice and beneficence. Researchers were cognisant of the social and legal risk participants run into in the case of exposure, and thus protection of participants was of utmost priority during recruitment, data collection, and write up.Participants were informed of the nature of the study and its purpose, and the voluntary nature of their participation. They were assured that they were free to pull out at any stage. All participants were requested to provide verbal consent. All the interviews were made at the privacy of the participants or in spaces that they consider safe in order to further ensure privacy and protection of participants. While keeping track of the LGB that took part in the study, care was taken not to have any identifying information such as name or address in the questionnaire or transcribed interviews to ensure confidentiality. While integrating excerpts of responses, participants were mentioned using a combination of age and data source to avoid linking response to any participant. Physical and digital data from the questionnaire, interviews, and focused group discussion do not have any information that link data to a particular person. These data are kept safe in secure spaces.
: Not applicable.
: The authors declare no competing interest.