Ethical research with participants who are deaf

When conducting research with participants who are deaf there is a range of potential issues to be considered: issues relating to language and communication, participants' past experience and culture, and the potential power imbalance between researcher and participant. From an ethical perspective these may compromise informed consent and confidentiality, may inadvertently result in deception and may interfere with the validity of the data. The consequences may be negative for both the deaf population and the research community. This paper highlights the issues that arose in four studies with participants who were deaf and discusses the extent to which the measures taken were effective.