Ethical reporting of research on violence against women and children during COVID-19: Analysis of 75 studies and recommendations for future guidelines

Changes in research practice during the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates renewed attention to ethical protocols and reporting for data collection on sensitive topics. We systematically searched journal publications from the start of the pandemic to November 2021, identifying 75 studies that collected primary data on violence against women and children. We assess the transparency of ethics reporting and adherence to relevant guidelines against a 14-item checklist of best practices. Studies reported adhering to best practices on 31% of scored items with highest reporting for ethical clearance (87%) and informed consent/assent (84/83%) and lowest reporting for facilitating referrals for minors and soliciting participant feedback (both 0%). Violence studies of primary data collected during COVID-19 report on few ethical standards, obscuring stakeholder ability to enforce a do no harm approach and to assess the reliability of findings. We offer recommendations and guidelines to improve future reporting and implementation of ethics within violence studies.