ethics in research with children: a review of the brazilian human and social sciences literature

Abstract

The debate on ethics around research involving human beings, in the national context, hasintensified in the last two decades. Social sciences and Humanities researchers, with fewadvances and many hurdles, converge on the refusal of the biomedical model as areference for all scientific work. The article seeks to give visibility to issues thatresearchers from these areas have been debating about the ethics in research involvingchildren. For this purpose, Brazilian articles and book chapters that discuss on the subject were analyzed. The investigation was focused on links between politics and science, theunequal adult-child power relationship, the development of procedures that allow aneffective listening to children and the children’s participation in the research processes.The central position of the literature, with which we agree, defends that ethical standardsare not enough to ensure children the role of social actors, requiring a new understandingof the role of children in research, as well as concerning the own researcher in thisrelationship. It is argued that the fruitful discussions on research with children cancontribute to the more general debate on national ethics regulation in research involvinghuman beings in the areas of humanities and social sciences.