Comment Period: Ethical Guidelines for Research

Share your comments on the World Pulse Ethical Guidelines for Evaluation and Research by 20 August.

World Pulse needs your help! As a women-led social network for social change, with more than 80,000 people connected together from 190 countries, we want to lead the way for social networks worldwide. We want to create clear, compelling, and consent-centered ethical guidelines for how World Pulse staff and any external researchers might gather data from our community to use in evaluation or research.

What does data collection at World Pulse look like?

As part of our work, World Pulse collects data about our community for monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL). You can see the results of the data we gather in reports like our annual Impact Survey and in our annual planning feedback cycles. We also use data to report about the impact of our community to foundations and individuals who support our work.

In addition, World Pulse occasionally runs campaigns to crowdsource the wisdom and knowledge of the community to inform the international development sector on women’s views and opinions on issues like Peace and Security; Technology; and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sometimes, external researchers contact World Pulse about doing research involving our community.

We are committed to ensuring that the way we conduct evaluation and research reflects the interests and values of our community members – YOU.

Why is this important?

How we conduct evaluation and research at World Pulse is important to make sure we live into our values. We want to make sure we are proactive in setting community-endorsed data collection systems. Other online communities have been reactive instead of proactive, and they have come under scrutiny for following practices their users do not support. At the end of the day, World Pulse strives to set an example for other organizations who want to build feminist, co-designed guidelines in their communities.

What have we done so far?

We began the process of building community-endorsed ethical guidelines for research and data collection a few years ago, when we gathered reflections and conducted follow-up interviews and focus groups with 18 community members and six staff members. The initial draft of the ethical guidelines that resulted from this process can be found here: World Pulse Ethical Guidelines (Draft).

What’s next?

We want to hear from you! We invite you to read the ethical guidelines, and to reflect on the following questions:

• What do you like most about these guidelines?
• What would you change?
• What is missing from what we discussed? What would you add?
• Is there anything else you would like to share?
  
  

We invite you to:

—> Share feedback on these questions, or anything else you’d like to share related to the ethical guidelines in the comment section below.

—> Share private feedback with the World Pulse team via the chat bubble in the bottom-right of your screen.

—> Join a focus group sessions during our July and August #ThrivingThursday meeting. The sessions are during our #ThrivingThursday meeting. Find the registration links below:

* Register to attend the July #ThrivingThursday session here.

* Register to attend the August #ThrivingThursday here.

The deadline for feedback is 20 August. We will share the culmination of feedback we have received and give the community a chance to vote on the final guidelines during our annual planning community vote in Q4 of 2022. 

View the Guidelines here: World Pulse Ethical Guidelines for Research & Evaluation (Draft)