Jacobsen Karen, Landau Loren B
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy/Feinstein, Intl Famine Ctr, Tufts Univ., USA.
Disasters. 2003 Sep;27(3):185-206. doi: 10.1111/1467-7717.00228.
Social scientists doing fieldwork in humanitarian situations often face a dual imperative: research should be both academically sound and policy relevant. We argue that much of the current research on forced migration is based on unsound methodology, and that the data and subsequent policy conclusions are often flawed or ethically suspect. This paper identifies some key methodological and ethical problems confronting social scientists studying forced migrants or their hosts. These problems include non-representativeness and bias, issues arising from working in unfamiliar contexts including translation and the use of local researchers, and ethical dilemmas including security and confidentiality issues and whether researchers are doing enough to 'do no harm'. The second part of the paper reviews the authors' own efforts to conduct research on urban refugees in Johannesburg. It concludes that while there is no single 'best practice' for refugee research, refugee studies would advance its academic and policy relevance by more seriously considering methodological and ethical concerns.
研究既要有学术严谨性，又要与政策相关。我们认为，当前许多关于被迫移民的研究基于不严谨的方法，数据及后续政策结论往往存在缺陷或在伦理上令人怀疑。本文指出了研究被迫移民及其收容者的社会科学家面临的一些关键方法和伦理问题。这些问题包括缺乏代表性和偏差、在陌生环境中开展工作产生的问题（包括翻译和当地研究人员的使用），以及伦理困境（包括安全和保密问题，以及研究人员是否在充分做到“不造成伤害”）。本文第二部分回顾了作者本人对约翰内斯堡城市难民开展研究的努力。结论是，虽然难民研究不存在单一的“最佳实践”，但通过更认真地考虑方法和伦理问题，难民研究将提升其学术和政策相关性。
