Best Practices for Returning Research Findings to Participants: Methodological and Ethical Considerations for Communication Researchers

Many research studies have offered ethical guidelines for the recruiting of participants, solicitation of informed consent, and harvesting of data from communities and individuals. However, few guidelines exist for returning research findings to participants although participants often desire access to the results of the studies in which they participate, and researchers are often interested in providing results. Furthermore, little research has considered the benefits and challenges of returning findings to participants outside of bioethics contexts. The decision to return findings to the individuals and/or communities from which they were taken upholds three key ethical principles, which work together to form the analytical framework for this study: respect for persons/autonomy, non-maleficence, and beneficence. Therefore, this study offers "best practices" for returning findings to participants as an ethical obligation for communication researchers. By utilizing the "expert panel process" to benchmark a panel of published expert opinions establishing ethical standards within human subject research, the purpose of this study is to aggregate and synthesize existing recommendations via grounded theory to produce novel translational insights for scholars not engaged in clinical health research. We conclude by providing seven best practices for effectively returning findings to participants based on our synthesis of the expert sources.