How well are researchers applying ethical principles and practices in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and medical research? A cross-sectional study

Objective: Describe perceptions of how well researchers conducting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and medical research apply ethical research practices. Study design: Cross-sectional online survey. Setting, participants: Researchers who included Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people or their data in their projects, and current or past members (previous 5 years) of a human research ethics committee that assessed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. Main outcome measures: Researchers’ engagement with 15 ethical research practices (on a 5-point Likert scale, poor to excellent). Results: 561 participants (382 researchers [68.1%] and 179 human research ethics committee members [31.9%]) completed the survey. Across all research practices, a rating of excellent was least frequently endorsed, with the highest frequency being for employing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team members (38 participants [6.8%]). A rating of poor was most common for enacting Indigenous data sovereignty and governance principles (156 participants [27.8%]). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents had significantly lower odds of perceiving high levels of adherence to ethical principles than non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents for all ethical principles, except employing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team members. In particular, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants had 65% lower odds of perceiving that researchers have high rates of adhering to disseminating results back to the community (odds ratio [OR], 0.35; 95% CI, 0.22–0.57), 56% lower odds of perceiving that researchers have high rates of adhering to engaging Aboriginal community in research implementation (OR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.27–0.73), and 54% lower odds of perceiving that researchers have high rates of adhering to engaging Aboriginal community in developing research questions (OR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.28–0.75). Conclusion: Researchers are not consistently implementing all ethical practices outlined in ...