Ethical Considerations and Confidentiality. The evaluation mission will observe utmost confidentiality related to sensitive information and feedback elicited during the individual and group interviews. Efforts will be made to include parents’ and children’s voices and beneficiary participation generally, using child-sensitive approaches to interviewing children following the ILO-IPEC guidelines on research with children on the worst forms of child labor (xxxx://xxx.xxx.xxx/ipecinfo/product/xxxxXxxxxxx.xx?productId=3026) and UNICEF Principles for Ethical Reporting on Children (xxxx://xxx.xxxxxx.xxx/media/media_tools_guidelines.html).
Ethical Considerations and Confidentiality. The evaluation mission will observe utmost confidentiality related to sensitive information and feedback elicited during the evaluation fieldwork. To mitigate bias during the data collection process and ensure a maximum freedom of expression of the implementing partners and stakeholders, only the respondents will be present during interviews. However, implementing partner staff may accompany the evaluators to make introductions whenever necessary, to facilitate the evaluation process and to allow the evaluators to observe the interaction between the implementing partner staff and interviewees. E. Stakeholders Meeting Following the field visits, a debriefing meeting will be conducted in Washington, DC by the Lead Evaluator that brings together project staff and other Winrock staff related to project implementation. The list of participants to be invited will be drafted prior to the evaluation fieldwork and confirmed in consultation with project staff during fieldwork. Stakeholders from some countries served by the project may be invited to attend the presentation though video- conference means. The meeting will be used to present the major preliminary findings and emerging issues, solicit recommendations, and obtain clarification or additional information from stakeholders. The agenda of the meeting will be determined by the Evaluation Team in consultation with project staff. Some specific questions for stakeholders may be prepared to guide the discussion and possibly a brief written feedback form. The agenda is expected to include some of the following items:
Ethical Considerations and Confidentiality. Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval 0000031237 was obtained before conducting this research. Permission was sought from the hospital administration prior to interacting with staff, clinical staff, patients, visitors and caretakers. Informed verbal consent was obtained from each participant in accordance with the ethical requirements of the IRB.
Ethical Considerations and Confidentiality. The evaluation mission will observe utmost confidentiality related to sensitive information and feedback elicited during the individual and group interviews. To mitigate bias during the data collection process and ensure a maximum freedom of expression of the implementing partners, stakeholders, communities, and beneficiaries, implementing partner staff will generally not be present during interviews. However, implementing partner staff may accompany the evaluator to make introductions whenever necessary, to facilitate the evaluation process, make respondents feel comfortable, and to allow the evaluator to observe the interaction between the implementing partner staff and the interviewees.
Ethical Considerations and Confidentiality. The proposed evaluation and preliminary data collection tools were submitted to the Emory Institutional Review Board (IRB) in April 2010 for approval. The IRB determined that the evaluation did not meet the definition of research with human subjects since it was primarily intended for quality improvement. The researcher received a letter confirming this decision (see Appendix 3). However, the researcher chose to comply with all IRB guidelines throughout the study. An informed consent process, including a translated consent form in the format suggested by the Emory IRB, was used with all participants. All participants were given the opportunity to withdraw their participation at any point during or after data collection. Additionally, all data has been de-identified to the extent possible. A letter in the sustainability score analysis and a number in the qualitative analysis will identify all sites, and no participant’s names will be used. During data collection and analysis, the information and data received from sites was kept or saved in a secure location. All paper records, except for consent forms, have been destroyed. Consent forms remain in a secure location. Most data were collected digitally and were identified solely by the letter assigned to each site.
