Ethical Challenges of the Socio-Juridical Research: Review from Good Practices in Published Articles

Abstract

In this article, some considerations and reflections about socio-juridical research are presented from the perspective of the statements and approaches of the human research ethics, as it has developed in the biomedical area. Socio-juridical research is taken as a subtype of social sciences research. As a part of the kind of research required to the advance and development of law, socio-juridical research has its particular theoretical considerations from which we make an approach to the problem of its definition. For the analysis from the research ethics point of view, ten articles presenting results of socio-juridical research were reviewed as a convenience sample, without it being a meta-analysis, taking human research ethics in biomedicine as a departing point. In the articles cited, it was found that in fact this type of research takes into account different ethical guidelines —not formally established— that seek for the respect of the rights of the participants, with the particularities of the socio-legal research and which deserve to be taken into account. The article concludes with some suggestions from the practical and methodological approach in regard to the ethics of socio-juridical research.