Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Sep 22:7:100432.
doi: 10.1016/j.pecinn.2025.100432. eCollection 2025 Dec.

Video recording as a data collection method in vulnerable populations - methodological and ethical considerations

Marte-Marie Wallander Karlsen  1 , Kari Sørensen  1 , Berit Hofset Larsen  2 , Lena Günterberg Heyn  3 , Jennifer Gerwing  4
Affiliations

Video recording as a data collection method in vulnerable populations - methodological and ethical considerations

Marte-Marie Wallander Karlsen et al. PEC Innov. .

Abstract

Introduction: Video recording vulnerable situations in healthcare practice raises ethical challenges that require addressing throughout the research process. Such challenges are linked to protecting research participants and assessing when and how using video recordings is appropriate.

Aim: This article aims to present methodological and ethical considerations inherent in video recording vulnerable participants and to offer future researchers concrete guidance and inspiration as to how they might assess these aspects of their own planned video research.

Results and discussion: As a group of researchers who have used video recordings to collect data of patients in vulnerable situations, we reflect upon our own methodological and ethical choices against the backdrop of other research studies and ethical guidelines.

Conclusion: Video recordings provide a unique opportunity to observe human interaction and to understand more about how we relate to each other. This article contributes to knowledge regarding empirically and ethically sound practice. We have demonstrated how methodological and ethical considerations are intertwined and should be treated as such.

Innovation: There are no existing guidelines or tools specifically for conducting and reporting qualitative studies using video recording that link the ethical considerations to the methodological choices. This article could provide a point of departure for establishing a reflective tool.

Keywords: Behavioral research; Children; Ethics; Healthcare; Observation; Patient-clinician communication; Video recording; Vulnerable populations.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

References

    1. Heath C., Hindmarsh J., Luff P. Sage; California: 2010. Video in qualitative research: Analysing social interaction in everyday life.
    1. Knoblauch H., Schnettler B. Videography: analysing video data as a ‘focused’ ethnographic and hermeneutical exercise. Qual Res. 2012;12(3):334–356. doi: 10.1177/1468794111436147. - DOI
    1. Golembiewski E.H., Espinoza Suarez N.R., Maraboto Escarria A.P., Yang A.X., Kunneman M., Hassett L.C., et al. Video-based observation research: A systematic review of studies in outpatient health care settings. Patient Educ Couns. 2023;106:42–67. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2022.09.017. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Beauchamp T.L., Childress J.F. 8th ed. Oxford University Press; 2019. Principles of biomedical ethics.
    1. U.S. Department of health and human services . Ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research. 1974. The Belmont Report.

LinkOut - more resources