Question

Case Description

A community coalition, initiated by researchers from a nearby university, has been meeting for more than a year to prioritize health concerns for youth in a Palestinian refugee camp near Beirut, Lebanon . The camp is a typical UNRWA camp and includes six elementary schools. The coalition comprises camp residents including youth (17–25 years), UNRWA representatives, camp NGO workers, and members of the university research team. The coalition has decided to focus on the mental health of younger ado lescents (11–13 years) in this Palestinian refugee camp and to develop a research intervention on this issue. Cross-sectional studies and evaluation of interventions that link social and life skills to mental health outcomes strongly support the view that these skills enhance the mental health of youth; however, most of the evidence comes from industrialized settings. The goal of the intervention is to enhance positive mental health by increasing the social and life skills of young adolescents, who will be recruited through the schools. The six elementary schools have comparable resources and student profi les. Each school has been randomly assigned either to the intervention or to the control arm of the study, and only fi fth and sixth graders will participate. Participating students in the intervention group will receive 45 extracurricular sessions of 1½ h each over 9 months and gain skills in solving problems, making decisions, building self-esteem, and enhancing relationships with peers, parent s, and teachers. Parents of the students in the intervention group will receive 15 1-h group sessions, and teachers in the intervention schools will be offered six workshops addressing the same topics. Students randomized to the control group will receive 10 sessions over the course of 9 months, but their parents will not participate in the program. However, because teachers often work in more than one camp school, some teachers at the control schools may participate in the intervention workshops. All participants in either the intervention or control condition must complete pre- and postassessment questionnaires that measure mental health and social and life skills before and after the intervention and at 6 months follow-up. Recruitment into the research project will unfold in phases. Toward the end of the school year preceding the intervention, parents will be invited to an informational session about the project that will take place in one of the camp schools. After the informational session, meetings will take place with individual families in their homes to recruit students entering grades 5 and 6. Some youth (ages 17–23 years) who live in the camp will receive training to become part of the recruitment team. These youth will visit the homes of all potential intervention and control participants to explain the study and to obtain parental consent . If the parents consent, students will be invited to the school for further discussion (to ensure confi dentiality and autonomy of decision making). Once the study has been explained to them, they’ll be asked individually to give their assent . 9 Public Health Research 308 You are a member of the university research team leading the effort to obtain informed consent. You would like to obtain consent and assent in accordance with standard international procedures, but you realize their application may need to be adjusted to the context of the camp. In particular, you have considered what role principle s such as trust , inclusion, diversity, and broad community participation should play in the research project. That is why you chose to have older youth from the camp obtain both parental consent and student’s assent, but you are concerned about potential problems that this approach may encounter. Also, given the power dynamics and conditions in the camp, you would like the research team to consider how this project can be used to spearhead a discussion with the community coalition about larger issues of empowerment and advocacy. With this in mind, you plan to address the following questions with your research team.

-What incentives, if any, should be given for participation? To whom should these incentives be given? Given the limited opportunities for the inhabitants of the refugee camps and the perceived power of NGOs, at what point would incentives become compulsive to encourage participation?

Answer 1

There is no need to offer incentives to the participants. The participants will get benefit in building career. They should be encouraged more.

Here the NGO deserves incentives. It needs more fund to implement successfully the plan.

After successful completion of the course the the participants should be engaged in various activities through the concerned NGO. They should be engaged to do the works what the other experts did before their participation. Besides, they can be engaged in other activities. Then the participants should be given incentives to encourage them.