Selected ethical dilemmas and legal problems in autoethnographic research in social rehabilitation pedagogy

Abstract

The aim of this article is the presentation and analysis of the selected ethical dilemmas and legal problems of a researcher in the study of the difficult way of life. There are a lot of questions about the ethical, decent and legal manner of research and behaviour in relation with the participators of the research. The practical aim of this article is the answer to the question – what should we do when we have various ethical dilemmas in our studies. A special difficult situation concerns the researcher – a pedagogue of social rehabilitation, because by conducting research on the phenomena of social exclusion or social pathology, he/she describes and analyses situations related to crime, para-criminal behaviours, addictions, touches the problems of deep diagnosis of disorders or therapy. During scientific research, he/she ‘goes deeper’ into difficult situations, ethical dilemmas, and brushes against legal problems. The guarantee of his/her safety, but above all the safety of respondents, is the legal awareness and ethical responsibility of the pedagogue. Although the article is not a complete and comprehensive study, it responds to the needs of researchers who themselves have to answer many questions about legal issues and solve any ethical dilemmas themselves in the process of collecting and developing data.