Ethical considerations in research when building predictive risk modelling in child and family welfare

Anne Marie Villumsen*, Michael Rosholm, Simon Bodilsen, Sanne Dalgaard Toft, Line Berg, Liesanth Yde Nirmalarajan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

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Abstract

This article presents and discusses ethical issues and implications in research when building a predictive risk model for potential use in Danish child and family welfare. The idea is to build a predictive risk model in order to study whether such a model can be valuable to child and family welfare services in the assessment of risk – aimed specifically at the decision-making process regarding notifications.

Based on a framework developed especially for this field, we present and discuss ethical considerations, reflections and actions in relation to four main ethical principles: non-maleficence, autonomy, justice and explicability. We hope that our reflections on these ethical challenges can inspire research – and potentially also the field of practice when taking a deep dive into the difficult field of digitalization in social work.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Comparative Social Work
Volume19
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)102-126
Number of pages25
ISSN0809-9936
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Oct 2024

Keywords

  • child and family welfare
  • child protection
  • decision-making
  • ethics
  • machine learning
  • notifications
  • predictive risk modelling

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