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Disaster response after a natural disaster is especially challenging when a great number of victims is involved, like in highly dense urban areas. Especially low-income groups become internally displaced and are in need of design innovations that offer short-term and long-term relief. However, design research for post-disaster shelter and settlement, can present specific practical and ethical challenges. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues for the development of a support-tool. Besides, conclusions are drawn for a suitable research methodology. The discussed issues are related to the development of a knowledge-based support-tool for self-built processes as a strategy for post-disaster recovery. It is a tool to teach survivors how to build their own hurricane or flood resistant shelter. Especially in the case of recurring disasters, the use of self-built processes provides an opportunity for humanitarian organisations to create a sustainable recovery process and prevent relief cost in the future. Preparing experiments is challenging because of the unpredictability of disaster occurrence but needed to convince humanitarian organisations of the functioning of the new support tool. A literature review, case study comparison and expert consultation enable preparing for experiments. A suitable research framework is found in the Design Research Methodology. Based on the ethical and practical considerations, the paper suggests for design research to for all research activity how to balance the critical need for research in and after the disaster, with the ethical responsibility to protect the vulnerable survivors serving as research participants in experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Confidentiality is widely considered to be of great importance in psychotherapy. With few exceptions, the breaching of confidentiality is an ethical violation and grounds for litigation. One such exception is the mandated reporting of known or suspected child abuse, representing a legally sanctioned limitation of confidentiality. Because clients generally expect unlimited confidentiality in therapeutic relationships, many therapists have begun to "forewarn" clients as a matter of informed consent. This research report: (a) briefly reviews issues surrounding mandatory reporting and confidentiality as they relate to forewarning, (b) defines and discusses forewarning as contrasted with "informing," (c) examines state statutes, case law and ethical guidelines relevant to forewarning, and (d) presents a survey of 428 mental health providers (MHPs) on their forewarning practices in which 36.9% forewarned all clients, 36.4% informed clients only upon suspicion of abuse, and 20.6% informed only after receiving a disclosure of abuse. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]