The Ethics of Security Research: An Ethics Framework for Contemporary Security Studies

Abstract

Offering a framework for ethical assessment, this article draws attention to the ethical issues accompanying empirical research on security. Speaking to the various subfields and schools of broadly conceived applied security studies, we classify the many ethical issues specific to empirical research on security, conflict, and political violence into researcher-related problems, subject-related problems, and result-related problems. We evaluate the importance and variations of these issues and highlight potential mitigation pathways. This effort brings together an existing but fragmented literature and builds upon the authors' own experiences in several subfields and schools of "hands-on" research on security and political violence.