Abstract
The capacity to conduct psychology research online has expanded more quickly than have ethics guidelines for digital research. We argue that researchers must proactively plan ways to engage ethically in online psychological research with vulnerable groups, including marginalized and immigrant youth and families. To that end, this article describes the ethical use of internet and cell phone technologies in psychological research with Black immigrant and refugee youth and families, which demands efforts to both deepen and extend the Belmont principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. We describe and apply four research frameworks-community-based participatory research, transdisciplinary team science, representational ethics, and cross-cultural psychology-that can be integrated to offer practical solutions to ethical challenges in digital research with Black immigrant and refugee youth and families. Then, as an illustration, we provide a case example of this approach using the Food, Culture, and Health Study conducted with Black Jamaican American and Somali American youth and families, who experience tridimensional acculturation due to their race and have been disproportionately impacted by the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and racism/Whiteness. We offer this article as a road map for other researchers seeking to conduct ethical digital community-based psychological research with Black immigrant youth and families and other marginalized communities.
Public Significance Statement
Special care is needed to protect vulnerable groups, including minoritized youth and immigrant communities, in this new digital research environment; however, there are not yet clear ethical guidelines for doing so. This article integrates four methodological frameworks that extend, deepen, and apply the core ethical principles of the Belmont Report-respect for persons, beneficence, and justice-as a road map for psychologists wanting to use internet and cell phone technologies in community-based research with Black immigrant and refugee youth and families. We offer our own research project as a case study illustrating how to generate creative solutions to ethical dilemmas in online research with diverse partner communities by prioritizing their cultural and contextual realities, both proactively and responsively.