u Research Process and Ethics

Research Process and Ethics

The team faced a challenging situation with threats posed by the military coup, compounded by frequent internet and telecommunications shutdowns, and electricity outages. Meanwhile, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 posed further challenges. Moreover, activists from the political and policy communities faced security concerns including the risk of arrest for exercising their right to expression. Therefore, the survey team strictly followed security protocols and health-related measures while implementing this survey in line with ethical guidelines developed by ISP-Myanmar and PACE for researchers.

In doing so, an ethics board of ISP-Myanmar members reviewed the methods with attention to possible risks and developed measures to ensure good research practices, depending on the requirements. Crucially, they managed to minimize the possible negative impacts by considering potential security risks for survey participants in advance, including the possible leakage of personal information about participants and the impact of conflicts of interest on research findings. The survey was conducted in such a way as to minimize the risk of any further spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, as well as to safeguard the physical and mental health of survey participants.

ISP-Myanmar provided all participants with a guarantee that their personal information, such as their names, would not be published, so that they could express their opinions freely when answering survey questions. Potential survey participants were informed of these precautions when invited to take part. Even before the survey was conducted, enumerators, supervisors, and trainers were tested for COVID-19 with Rapid Antigen Tests and provided the required equipment to prevent infection.

Several measures were developed by recording whether people directly involved in the survey or their family members were infected with COVID one week before the training, as well as daily temperature checks for each enumerator, trainer, and supervisor during the training and survey period. Throughout the survey period and data entry processes, various safety measures, such as the provision of separate rooms for each interview, as well as the rules and regulations regarding the risk of COVID-19 infections were issued.