Beneficence is one of the four core principles that underpin ethical human research, alongside respect, justice, and research merit and integrity. It refers to the obligation of researchers and evaluators to maximise possible benefits and minimise possible harms. In other words, research and evaluation should be designed and conducted in a way that promotes good outcomes — for participants, for communities, and for society — while actively avoiding or reducing harm.

In policy and program evaluation, market research, and social research, beneficence plays a central role. Activities often involve asking people to share personal experiences, opinions, or behaviours — sometimes on sensitive or emotionally charged topics. Beneficence provides a framework for ensuring that this engagement is ethically sound: 

• that the research and evaluation is worth doing; 
• that it is done with care; and 
• that it does not place undue burden on those who participate.

Let’s take a closer look at how this is applied in practice.

Introduction

Ethical review, whether by a full committee or lower risk review must ensure that the activities uphold the principles of the National Statement:

• Research merit and integrity;
• Justice
• Beneficence
• Respect

When preparing a submission for ethical review, we ask you to identify how your proposed work has considered each of these principles in the design process. You can do this either by written response or by reference to documents such as your project plan. But it is important regardless to consider each of the principles and how they are met because it is an opportunity to ensure that your work is of value to all stakeholders.

This article is the fourth in a series of pieces designed to unpack each of the principles and support you in identifying how your project addresses them. 

Our first article took a look at research merit, our second looked at integrity, our third looked at justice, and this resource moves to the next principle: beneficence. 

Defining beneficence in the National Statement

Sections 1.6 to 1.9 of the NHMRC National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research  set out how beneficence should be applied in practice. These sections highlight four key responsibilities for researchers: and evaluators:

• The likely benefit (to participants and/or the community) must justify the risk.
• Researchers and evaluators must minimise harm to, be transparent with, and ensure the welfare of participants.
• Risks to participants should be lower when there is no direct benefit to those participants.
• Where the risks to participants are no longer justified by the benefits, activities must be suspended, and a decision made to either modify or discontinue the activities.

How do I demonstrate beneficence in my project? 

Given the above considerations, you can consider each of these points as questions you must address in the design process, and incorporate your responses in your application. 

Do the benefits justify the risks?

The starting point for beneficence is a clear ethical test: is the likely benefit of the research sufficient to justify any risks of harm or discomfort to participants? 

This benefit might be direct (e.g. improved services for a target group), indirect (e.g. better-informed policy), or collective (e.g. increased understanding of a social issue). But it must be real, likely, and it must be proportionate to the risks involved.

In practice this means thinking carefully about the value of the insights being sought and whether they are worth any risk of harm or discomfort, as well as the time, effort, or emotional labour being asked of participants.

There's an interesting consideration with the interpretation of this principle. Unlike other forms of weighing benefits (think cost-benefit analysis, or utilitarianism), the principle of beneficence is based on whether the likely benefit justifies the risk, not on whether it outweighs the consequences should the risk occur. This is because risk is fundamentally about the chance of something happening, while benefits can be near-certain (like knowledge gained or payments to participants) as well as chance based (for example, research may be likely to lead to better outcomes for a community, but it's not guaranteed). This means that a cost-benefit style calculation doesn't work. 

Therefore we have to consider whether the risk is justified, that is, whether we are willing to accept the possibility of those risks occurring in order to obtain the benefits. 

To use an extremely reductive but nonetheless illustrative example (and in the tradition of Donella Meadows), we can use coffee as an example.* Say you want to have a coffee, but you live in Melbourne where the weather is notoriously changeable. You can frame this as a benefit-risk calculation:

• Likely benefits: 
• • You acquire coffee
  • Your productivity increases because of the coffee
  • You get out of the house
• Risks (with estimates of likelihood and magnitude):
• • You might get rained on (moderate likelihood, low consequences)
  • You might trip over and hurt yourself (low likelihood, moderate consequences)
  • You might get hit by a car (very low likelihood, catastrophic consequences)

Given these benefits and risks, you then have to ask whether it's worthwhile going for that coffee. You may decide that you're willing to take those risks, because the benefit justifies it.

Are we minimising harm, being transparent, and ensuring welfare?

Beneficence is not just about weighing up risks and benefits — it’s also about actively reducing risk wherever possible. Section 1.7 of the National Statement outlines three specific responsibilities:

1. Designing your project and activities to minimise risks of harm. Practical examples include: 
2. • avoiding unnecessary questions, 
   • reducing participant cognitive and other burdens, and 
   • being sensitive to the context in which the interaction takes place. A question asked in an anonymous online survey has very different risks to the same question when asked in a community workshop.
3. Clarifying risks and benefits. Participants must be given clear information about what the research involves, what it hopes to achieve, and what risks (if any) are involved. Remember that risks may not just impact the participant, but may also impact their families and communities. This represents the "informed" part of "informed consent".
4. Ensuring participant welfare. Researchers have a duty of care throughout the research process. This includes being alert to signs of distress, offering support or referrals where appropriate, and creating space for participants to opt out without pressure. Our resource on trauma-informed practice goes into this element in more detail.

Is there no direct benefit to participants? 

Many research and evaluation projects, especially those involving general population surveys, lapsing programs, or stakeholder consultations, do not offer direct benefits to participants. In these cases, the ethical bar is higher. The risks must be lower than would be acceptable in studies where participants stand to gain something personally.

This principle is particularly relevant in market research or evaluations involving vulnerable groups. For example, if a study involves asking people with lived experience of homelessness about their service use, and there is no direct benefit to them, the research methods must be designed with extra care to minimise risks of emotional or psychological harm.

It is also worth noting that while incentives (such as payments of money) directly benefit the participant, adding this to a project is not a way of justifying that greater risks can be taken. Direct incentives can create material risks for a project when the incentive is inappropriate to the context, or of a form or amount that encourages unwanted participant behaviours or skews the information collected.

What will we do if risks change?

Ethical practice and reflection is a continual exercise. If, during the course of a project, it becomes clear that the risks to participants are no longer justified by the likely benefits (or the likely benefits are no longer likely), the research must be suspended. This might happen if new information emerges, if participants report unexpected distress, or if the research context changes significantly.

In such cases, researchers must consult with ethics review bodies, participants, and organisations to determine whether the project should be modified or discontinued. This process must be transparent and timely, and the ethics review body must be notified of any decisions made.

To revisit our example from earlier, the context of the risks and benefits change in light of new knowledge:

• You look outside and it's already raining
• Your (drenched) housemate just brought back a bag of coffee beans from the supermarket
• The local café posted on social media that they've gone fully decaf as a new trend

Now the benefits and the risks are modified, and you may find that it's less justifiable to go get coffee.

Summary

The principle of beneficence underscores the fact that to think and act ethically in evaluation and research is an ongoing process, and that all research and evaluation should be conducted with the goal of benefiting stakeholders.

As a last consideration of beneficence not set out here in the National Statement (but will be a core part of our next deep dive), we should remember that risks and benefits are valued differently for different stakeholders. If participants and their communities perceive the benefits as justifying the risks, then this needs to be taken into account, consistent with the principle of respect. 

*The coffee example is deliberately reductive as it allows us to explore the key elements around weighing up risks and benefits using a relatable scenario that is (mostly) isolated from moral and ethical considerations. In practice, the risks and benefits are interwoven with the ethical dimensions, and these would need to be considered simultaneously.