Preregister Your Ethical Redlines: Vulnerable Populations, Policy Engagement, and the Perils of E-Hacking

Abstract

This essay makes a modest proposal: scholars who conduct fieldwork among vulnerable populations in fragile settings and who seek to influence policy should preregister their ethical redlines. Public preregistration can help avoid shifting ethical standards (``e-hacking'') during fieldwork while improving our baseline risk and harm assessments among participants and their communities. The essay identifies the causes and varieties of ``e-hacking'' before providing a conceptual framework that helps researchers locate their ethical redlines at five different levels of analysis. Eight concrete suggestions are then provided for turning ethics into action to improve our efforts at both ethical fieldwork and policy engagement.

Keywords: preregistration; ethical redlines; fieldwork; vulnerable populations; responsible engagement; risk assessment