A focus on ethics and researcher wellbeing

This chapter primarily examines the ethics of researcher care when doing emotionally challenging research (e.g. studies involving abused participants), but it has wider implications for all research areas (e.g. by addressing researcher stress and career development pressures). It is important to engage with researcher care and wellbeing because researching emotionally challenging topics can impact researchers’ mental and physical health. Whilst the recent recognition of issue is welcome, anecdotal evidence indicates that few institutions effectively address this. This chapter therefore explores researcher wellbeing and ways to improve it, including our own researcher wellbeing guidance and proposed institutional responsibilities.