In the literature on social research, adherence to the principle of informed consent is sometimes recommended on the ground that the privacy of those being studied is hereby protected. The principle has it that before becoming part of a study, a competent individual must receive information about its purpose, use, etc., and on this basis freely agree to participate. Joan Sieber motivates the employment of informed consent as a way to safeguard research participants' privacy as follows: "A research experience regarded (...) by some as a delightful opportunity for self-disclosure could constitute an unbearable invasion of privacy for... (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of vulnerability in the context of social research ethics. An ambiguity is noted in use of this term: it may refer to an incapacity to provide informed consent to participate in a research project, or it may imply heightened susceptibility to the risk of harm. It is pointed out that vulnerability is a matter of degree, and that there are different sources and types of harm, which must be taken into account in any judgment about (...) whether additional precautions are required to protect particular categories of research participants. Furthermore, such judgments must be sensitive to the particular context in which research is taking place. This is one of several considerations that raise questions about the desirability of the sort of pre-emptive ethical regulation that has become institutionalized in many countries over the past few decades, a form that is more appropriate to medical rather than to social research. However, this is not to deny that a concern with the vulnerability of research participants is necessary on the part of social researchers. Furthermore, it must be recognized that researchers themselves may be vulnerable to harm in the research process. Finally, some discussion is provided of the way in which a concern with vulnerability can conflict with other considerations that researchers need to take into account in doing their work. The key point is that vulnerability is a complex and controversial concept, and it requires careful handling in thinking about social research ethics. (shrink)

The first objective of this article is to demonstrate that ethics committee members can learn a great deal from a forensic analysis of two classic psychology studies: Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Study and Milgram’s Obedience Study. Rather than using hindsight to retrospectively eradicate the harm in these studies, the article uses a prospective minimization of harm technique. Milgram attempted to be ethical by trying to protect his subjects through debriefing and a follow-up survey. He could have done more, however, by carrying (...) out what ethics committees routinely insist on today for those researching sensitive topics. The establishment of counselling supports to identify harm to participants would have minimized additional harm. Were these in place, or in Zimbardo’s case had the Stanford Ethics Committee properly identified Zimbardo’s conflict of interest – he was both a principal investigator and the prison warden – how much harm could have been minimized? The second aim is to examine how some qualitative authors routinely demonize these classic studies. It might appear that there are too few cases of unethical qualitative research to justify such an examination; however, this article identifies a number of recent examples of ethically dubious qualitative research. This would suggest that qualitative research should examine its own ethics before poaching from psychology. (shrink)

The fast growing interest in the work of university ethics review boards is evident in the proliferation of research and literature in the area. This article focuses on a Research Ethics Board (REB) in the Canadian context. In-depth, open-ended interviews with REB members and findings from a qualitative study designed to examine the ethics review of school-based research are used to illustrate points raised in the paper. The author’s experiences as academic researcher, advisor to student researchers and a 3-year term (...) as an REB member inform the discussion. Macro issues related to the general workings of the board (e.g., maintaining appropriate membership) and micro issues connected to individual REB members’ experiences of reviewing research applications are examined. The author’s goal is to contribute to a fastgrowing conversation related to the issues that influence university ethics review while drawing attention to the contribution that faculty members’ understandings of their work as REB members can make to that conversation. (shrink)

In 1985, after nearly a decade of inconclusive professional response to public concern about misconduct in research, Congress passed legislation requiring action. Subsequent to this legislation, federal agencies and research universities adopted policies for responding to allegations of misconduct in research. Conferences, sessions at professional meetings, and special publications were organized. New educational initiatives were begun, many in response to a 1989 National Institutes of Health/ Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration requirement to include ethics instruction in training grants. (...) Notwithstanding a few key unresolved issues, such as the lack of a uniform federal definition of misconduct in research, the years since 1985 have witnessed a marked change in the professional response to misconduct in research. This paper evaluates the change since 1985 from the perspective of three key goals: 1) confronting misconduct, 2) promoting integrity and 3) ensuring integrity. While significant progress has been made in achieving the first two goals, the third remains largely unaddressed. The latter is due to the fact that researchers have not been interested in studying the integrity of their own profession. It is therefore suggested that studies are needed of routine or normal research practices and their impact on integrity for use in making decisions about research conduct policy. (shrink)

Research examining the possible effects of deceptive research participation on participants' perceptions of psychology has yielded equivocal results. The present study's goal was to clarify the possible effects of participation in mildly deceptive research on participants' impressions of scientific and applied psychology. Participants (N = 112) were randomly assigned to one of six experimental conditions: active groups receiving negative, positive, or no feedback, or passive groups receiving negative, positive, or no feedback. Following participation, participants completed measures of impressions of psychotherapy (...) and psychotherapists, researchers, and instructors. The manipulation did not affect attitudes toward psychology on any of the dependent measures, although gender effects resulted on one measure. Participants in general reported very positive attitudes toward the science and practice of psychology. Recommendations are offered for future research on the effects of more extensive deceptions. (shrink)

This article discusses the ethical and methodological issues associated with boredom experienced by human participants during psychological experiments. Ways are suggested in which informed consent, briefing, and debriefing can be used to prevent or remedy boredom induced during experiments. We address methodological and ethical concerns, and we discuss the advantages of the proposed approach for experimenters' practice and training of undergraduate students. Future directions for much needed research on these topics are also emphasized.

Mandatory reporting laws, which vary slightly from state to state, require reporting by helping professionals when there is reasonable cause to suspect child abuse. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) require researchers to warn subjects of this duty to report, which may have a chilling effect on subject rapport and candor. Certificates of confidentiality, in conjunction with other precautions, may reduce some barriers to valid research. Attempts to resolve problems created by reporting laws must produce the most valid research, while minimizing harm (...) and distress to research participants, their families, and the researcher and meeting local and federal legal requirements. (shrink)

To learn whether criticism and regulation of research practices have been followed by a reduction of deception or use of more acceptable approaches to deception, the contents of all 1969, 1978, 1986, and 1992 issues of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology were examined. Deception research was coded according to type of (non)informing (e.g., false informing, consent to deception, no informing), possible harmfulness of deception employed (e.g., powerfulness of induction, morality of the behavior induced, privacy of behavior), method of (...) deception (e.g., bogus device or role, false purpose of study, false feedback), and debriefing employed. Use of confederates has been partly replaced by uses of computers. "Consent" with false informing declined after 1969, then rose in 1992. Changes in the topics studied (e.g., attribution, socialization, personality) largely accounted for the decline in deception in 1978 and 1986. More attention needs to be given to ways of respecting subjects' autonomy, to appropriate debriefing and desensitizing, and to selecting the most valid and least objectionable deception methods. (shrink)

This article is a reconsideration of Tesch's (1977) ethical, educational, and methodological functions for debriefing through a literature review and an Internet survey of authors of articles published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Journal of Traumatic Stress . We advocate for a larger ethical role for debriefing in nondeception research. The educational function of debriefing is examined in light of the continued popularity of undergraduate participant pools. A case is made for the methodological function of debriefing (...) to clarify aspects of research participation. Recommendations are made to improve the conducting and reporting of debriefings. (shrink)

It is not unusual for researchers in ethnography (and sometimes Institutional Review Boards) to assume that research of “public” behavior is morally unproblematic. I examine an historical case of ethnographic research and the sustained moral outrage to the research expressed by the subjects of that research. I suggest that the moral outrage was legitimate and articulate some of the ethical issues underlying that outrage. I argue that morally problematic Ethnographic research of public behavior can derive from research practice that includes (...) a tendency to collapse the distinction between harm and moral wrong, a failure to take account of recent work on ethical issues in privacy; failure to appreciate the deception involved in ethnographers’ failure to reveal their role as researchers to subjects and finally a failure to appropriately weigh the moral significance of issues of invasion of privacy and inflicted insight in both the research process and subsequent publication of research. (shrink)

The Internet offers many new opportunities for behavioral researchers to conduct quantitative and qualitative research. Although the ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association generalize, in part, to research conducted through the Internet, several matters related to Internet research require further analysis. This article reviews several fundamental ethical issues related to Internet research, namely the preservation of privacy, the issuance of informed consent, the use of deception and false feedback, and research methods. In essence, the Internet offers unique challenges to (...) behavioral researchers. Among these are the need to better define the distinction between private and public behavior performed through the Internet, ensure mechanisms for obtaining valid informed consent from participants and performing debriefing exercises, and verify the validity of data collected through the Internet. (shrink)

Certain critical accounts of conventional research practices in business and the social sciences are explored in this essay. These accounts derive from alternative social paradigms and their underlying assumptions about appropriate social inquiry and knowledge construction. Among these alternative social paradigms, metatheories, mindscapes, or worldviews are social constructionist, critical, feminist, and postmodern or poststructural thinking. Individuals with these assumptions and values for knowledge construction are increasingly challenging conventional scholarship in what has been referred to as paradigm debates or wars. Issues (...) of incommensurability or cross-paradigmatic communication potentials, as well as reflexivity, are raised in terms of moral education and development potentials for applied social science fields. Barriers and suggestions for increased moral development in academic and professional communities are discussed. In particular, moral forums in which participants have enhanced intrapersonal and interpersonal communication skills appear to be needed to surface and share often taken-for-granted assumptions concerning moral knowledge construction. (shrink)

The article is based on the author’s experience as an administrator of three primarily social science institutional review boards (IRBs) to which researchers presented research protocols that purported to be minimal risk studies of teacher practice where the “teacher–researcher” was the “research subject.” Recently, educational, social, and behavioral science researchers encounter many problems with regard to their methodologies and the oversight mandate of the IRBs. There is a divergence between the IRB’s role and assumed bio-clinical predisposition and the ability of (...) behavioral and social science researchers to have their research methodologies and research understood and appreciated by IRB members. The article explores some of the dilemmas confronting IRB members and administrators in the review and administration of the action research protocols, particularly those that involve vulnerable populations and which, from the practitioner–researcher’s perspective, focus on the practitioner–researcher as the object of the research. (shrink)

This article examines whether and how a particular research practice is overseen and supervised, and by whom. This investigation fills notable gaps in the literature on science, including a lack of emphasis on larger sociopolitical structures, a neglect of regulation, and indifference toward ethics. The author focuses on the oversight of a particular research practice; data editing; which embodies qualities that are intriguing to sociologists of science: invisibility, uncertainty, heterogeneity, and reliance on tacit knowledge. These characteristics pose unique challenges to (...) oversight efforts. An analysis of in-depth interviews with gatekeepers reveals that although the methodological and ethical implications of data editing strategies can be substantial, oversight of such practices falls outside the stages and domains of current gatekeeping activity. These findings serve as the basis for recommendations to ensure data integrity while maintaining the professional autonomy of researchers. (shrink)

CABLES is both an acronym and metaphor for conceptualizing research participation risk by considering 6 distinct domains in which risks of harm to research participants may exist: cognitive, affective, biological, legal, economic, and social/cultural. These domains are described and illustrated, along with suggestions for minimizing or eliminating the potential hazards to human participants in biomedical and behavioral science research. Adoption of a thoughtful ethical analysis addressing all 6 CABLES strands in designing research provides a strong protective step toward safeguarding and (...) promoting the well-being of study participants. (shrink)

In debate over the ethics of deceptive experiments in American psy chology, commentators often provide an inaccurate history of these experiments. This happens especially where writers portray experi mental deception as a necessary accompaniment to human experiments, rather than a conscious choice based on values attached to persons and scientific inquiry. Compounding the error, commentators typically give a misleading portrayal of psychologists' attitudes and procedures. Commentators frequently cite Stanley Milgram's work in the 1960s as a harbinger of changed attitudes towards (...) deception, and suggest that today's psychologists abide by more enlightened ethical practices. It is difficult to find evidence to support this portrayal. (shrink)

To show how the case of Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein brings light to the ethical and moral issues raised in Institutional Review Board protocols, we nest an imaginary IRB proposal dated August 1790 by Victor Frankenstein within a discussion of the importance and function of the IRB. Considering the world of science as would have appeared in 1790 when Victor was a student at Ingolstadt, we offer a schematic overview of a fecund moment when advances in comparative anatomy, medical experimentation (...) and theories of life involving animalcules and animal electricity sparked intensive debates about the basic principles of life and the relationship between body and soul. Constructing an IRB application based upon myriad speculations circulating up to 1790, we imagine how Victor would have drawn upon his contemporaries’ scientific work to justify the feasibility of his project, as well as how he might have outlined the ethical implications of his plan to animate life from “dead” tissues. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor failed to consider his creature’s autonomy, vulnerability, and welfare. In this IRB proposal, we show Victor facing those issues of justice and emphasize how the novel can be an important component in courses or workshops on research ethics. Had Victor Frankenstein had to submit an IRB proposal tragedy may have been averted, for he would have been compelled to consider the consequences of his experiment and acknowledge, if not fulfill, his concomitant responsibilities to the creature that he abandoned and left to fend for itself. (shrink)

Across disciplines there is a large and increasing number of research projects that rely on data collection activities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, these are accompanied by an extensive range of ethical challenges. While the safeguarding of study participants is the primary aim of existing ethics guidelines, this paper argues that this “do no harm” principle should be extended to include research staff. This study is a comprehensive review of more than 80 existing ethics guidelines and protocols that (...) reveals a lack of safeguarding research staff regarding the ethical challenges faced during data collection activities in LMICs. This is particularly the case when it comes to issues such as power imbalances, political risk, staff’s emotional wellbeing or dealing with feelings of guilt. Lead organizations are called upon to develop guiding principles that encompass the safeguarding of research staff, which are then to be adapted and translated into specific protocols and tools by institutions. (shrink)

Monshi and Zieglmayer's case study presents Sri Lankan participants as having views on the privacy of health information that differ radically from those commonly found in Western nations. This article explores 2 questions that their case study raises for the ethical review of research in international settings: First, are allegedly universal ethical principles - of the sort promulgated in the Belmont Report (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1978) - useful in international settings?, (...) and second, how should research oversight bodies address the challenges that arise in international behavioral and social science research? (shrink)

Evidence exists that behavioral and social science researchers have been frustrated with regulations and institutional review boards (IRBs) from the 1970s through today. Making matters worse, many human participants protection instruction programs - now mandated by IRBs - offer inadequate reasons why researchers should comply with regulations and IRBs. Promoting compliance either for its own sake or to avoid penalties is contrary to the developmental aims of moral education and may be ineffective in fostering the responsible conduct of research. This (...) article explores the concept of professional virtue and argues that compliance is capable of becoming a professional virtue like scientific honesty. This requires, however, that regulatory and IRB demands contribute to human well-being and to the aims of research as a profession and that researchers, therefore, internalize the norms that underlie regulatory and IRB demands. This, in turn, requires a series of changes in the way society develops, promulgates, and enforces regulatory and IRB rules. The challenge is, simply put, to embed compliance into the world of living morality. (shrink)

This paper describes how the ethical problems raised by scientific data obtained through harmful and immoral conduct may also emerge in cases where data is collected from the Internet. It describes the major arguments for and against using ill-gotten information in research, and shows how they may be applied to research that either collects information about the Internet itself or which uses data from questionable or unknown sources on the Internet. Three examples demonstrate how researchers address the ethical issues raised (...) by the sources of data that they use and how the existing arguments concerning the use of ill-gotten information apply to Internet research. The problems faced by researchers who collect or use data from the Internet are shown to be the same problems faced by researchers in other fields who may obtain or use ill-gotten information. (shrink)

What can one expect to unfold when they choose to do a face-to-face study of children on the farm and their use of space in rural southwestern Ontario? The process of getting the research off the ground from an ethics point of view was one where it was anything but normative, and to a large extent, a grueling process. This article situates the researcher’s dilemma and lays out the unfolding of the research process with reference to the Tri-Council Policy Statement (...) on Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans and the major components found to trouble a research ethics board on a university campus. Last, academic freedom and the rights of researchers are considered in the context of undertaking the proposed research agenda. (shrink)

This paper provides a roadmap for engaging in cross-cultural, developmental research in practical, ethical, and community-engaged ways. To cultivate the flexibility necessary for conducting cross-cultural research, we structure our roadmap as a series of questions that each research program might consider prior to embarking on cross-cultural examinations in developmental science. Within each topic, we focus on the challenges and opportunities inherent to different types of study designs, fieldwork, and collaborations because our collective experience in conducting research in multiple cultural contexts (...) has taught us that there can be no single “best practice”. Here we identify the challenges that are unique to cross-cultural research as well as present a series of recommendations and guidelines. We also bring to the forefront ethical considerations which are rarely encountered in the laboratory context, but which researchers face daily while conducting research in a cultural context which one is not a member. As each research context requires unique solutions to these recurring challenges, we urge researchers to use this set of questions as a starting point, and to expand and tailor the questions and potential solutions with community members to support their own research design or cultural context. This will allow us to move the field towards more inclusive and ethical research practices. (shrink)

Meeting appropriate ethical standards for research involving human participants, mean ensuring confidentiality. It is assumed that the research participant will accept the safeguarding protocols necessary to ensure confidentiality. This assumption however oversimplifies the variation of motivations that goes into participants’ decisions to participate in research. Drawing on reflections from my fieldwork experience in Ghana, I answer the questions: Why do research participants reject confidentiality? What ethical position can one take when the researcher and the researched have conflicting perspectives about confidentiality? (...) I contend that participants with personal stake refuse confidentiality when they want to be acknowledged for their data. Rejecting confidentiality is however, embedded in the individual perspective, cultural, and political context of the study area. The ethical concerns of such refusal can be ameliorated if confidentiality is nuanced to include six categorically distinct but mutually non-exclusive stages: research-planning, ongoing-information, writing-up, reality-after-research, differential-disseminations, and no-confidentiality-clause. The paper further argues that whilst maintaining institutional allegiance in this matter is crucial, employing confidentiality should lie at the intersection of participants’ motivation for taking part in the research, the socio-cultural-specific-context of the study location and the nature of the topic being explored. (shrink)

Background: Research indicates that shunning and ostracism may have long-lasting and severe effects on the individual’s well-being. However, there is scarcity of research into shunning enacted in a religious context. Therefore, using Jehovah’s Witnesses as an example, the present research explores the experiences of being shunned from a religious community, with particular reference to the impact on the lives of individuals, and the strategies employed to cope with such an event. Methodology: Social Identity Theory and Identity Process Theory, integrated with (...) the constructs of power and the Social Dominance Theory, provide the theoretical framework which underpins the current thesis. The narratives of two groups of participants, those of members who have been shunned as well as PIMO and former Elders, form the research data. The data are analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Results: The thesis has generated three main findings. First, the participants’ journey is a complex experience, where intrinsic and extrinsic forces combine in influencing the individual’s behaviour and decisions. Second, shunning may produce constructive outcomes, but by-and-large, shunning is an experience of loss which has serious impacts on the individual’s physical and emotional well-being. Third, the individual after being shunned embarks on a journey towards personal emancipation which culminates with a cognitive revolution. However, the process towards regaining ownership and autonomy is not defined by fixed stages of coping. Rather, it appears to be a continuum with the individual advancing from personal stagnation to personal progression over time. Implications: By developing an awareness of the underlying factors which may facilitate or hinder personal progression, this research may assist healthcare professionals in providing a more effective support that aims at helping the shunned client to progress towards autonomy and self-reliance. Also, the contribution of this research leads to new lines of inquiry. Future work would focus on the need of informing and engaging the police force, legislators, educational stakeholders, and policy makers. This is firstly, to properly address reports of discrimination because of religious shunning, secondly, to enhance child safety in ensuring their best interests are met, and lastly, to guarantee the individual’s basic rights during the judicial process. (shrink)

The popularity of empirical methods in software engineering research is on the rise. Surveys, experiments, metrics, case studies, and field studies are examples of empirical methods used to investigate both software engineering processes and products. The increased application of such methods has also brought about an increase in discussions about adapting these methods to the particularities of software engineering. In contrast, the ethical issues raised by empirical methods have received little attention in the software engineering literature. In this chapter, we (...) introduce four ethics principles of primary importance for conducting ethical research. We additionally discuss and provide examples of applying these principles in the context of ethics review. (shrink)

Experimental design is one aspect of a scientific method. A well-designed, properly conducted experiment aims to control variables in order to isolate and manipulate causal effects and thereby maximize internal validity, support causal inferences, and guarantee reliable results. Traditionally employed in the natural sciences, experimental design has become an important part of research in the social and behavioral sciences. Experimental methods are also endorsed as the most reliable guides to policy effectiveness. Through a discussion of some of the central concepts (...) associated with experimental design, including controlled variation and randomization, this chapter will provide a summary of key ethical issues that tend to arise in experimental contexts. In addition, by exploring assumptions about the nature of causation and by analyzing features of causal relationships, systems, and inferences in social contexts, this chapter will summarize the ways in which experimental design can undermine the integrity of not only social and behavioral research but policies implemented on the basis of such research. (shrink)