Ethical Concerns
Ethics is the study of "correct and responsible behavior".
Most ethical issues involve trade-offs between competing values and depend on the specific situation. In particular, many issues involve a balance between two values: the pursuit of scientific knowledge and the rights of those being studied. Potential benefits such as advancing our understanding of social life, improving decision making, or helping research participants must be weighed against potential costs such as a loss of dignity, self-esteem, privacy or democratic freedom.
I. Ethical Issues Involving Research Subjects
A review of these five issues will sensitize you to research situations that are potentially unethical as well as to strategies and guidelines that help to ensure subjects' rights.
1. Principle of Nonmaleficence/Harm--a straight forward ethical principle is that researchers should not cause harm. The issue of harm is not quite so simple and straightforward as it may appear. It is sometimes difficult to define and predict.
A. Physical Harm--The risk of physical harm is rare in social research. If you can not guarantee physical safety of your subjects terminate the project immediately -- usually not problem for social science.
B. Psychological Abuse, Stress of Loss of Self-Esteem--Is it unethical to cause discomfort? Social science researchers place people in stressful, embarrassing, anxiety-producing situations.
Under these circumstances, researchers argue that the knowledge gained and precautions taken outweigh the stress and potential psychological harm that subjects experience.
C. Legal Harm--What should a researcher do if they learn of illegal activity when collecting data? A researcher must weigh the value of protecting the researcher-subject relationship and the benefits to future researchers against potential harm to innocent people.
This dilemma typically arises with field research.
2. Principle of Beneficence/Deception--The principle stipulates a positive obligation to remove existing harms and to confer benefits on others. The researcher must weigh the harmful risks of research against its possible benefits. That is, researchers sometimes deceive or lie to subjects in that they misrepresent their true intentions. If the subjects knew the true purpose, they would modify their behavior, making it impossible to learn of their real behavior (demand characteristics), or access to are search site might be impossible if they told the truth.
The basic rationale for deception is that it is necessary in order to place research participants in a mental state where they will behave naturally. Deceiving subjects about the true purpose of a study diverts their attention from the hypothesis and enhances experimental realism by giving subjects a believable and engrossing explanation for what they are doing. Deception is never preferable if the researcher could accomplish the same thing without deception. Do not lie unless it is required for legitimate research reasons. Deception is acceptable only if there is a specific methodological purpose for it, and even then, it should be used only to the minimal degree necessary.
Debriefing--Be sure to debrief subjects afterwards. The debriefing session in experiments can help to assess as well as ameliorate negative reactions. When exposed to the truth, subjects may feel embarrassed or angered about having been fooled and may harbor resentment toward the investigator and toward social research in general. It helps to relieve some of the subjects discomfort if the researcher express their own discomfort about the necessity of using deception. Also researcher should point out that the cover story is convincing enough that everyone gets fooled. The subject should not leave with more anxiety or lower self-esteem than they came in with.
3. Principle of autonomy/Informed Consent--Basic to this concept is the demand that the researcher respect the rights, values, and decisions of other people. This principle is exemplified by the use of informed consent in the research procedure. Never force anyone into participating. Participation must be voluntary. It is not enough to get permission from subjects; they need to know what they are being asked to participate in so that they can make an informed decision. Subjects become aware of their rights and what they are getting involved in when they read and sign a statement giving informed consent, a written agreement to participate given by subjects after they learn something about the research procedure. An individual is entitled to decline to participate in any research project or to terminate participation at any time. Signed consent statements are optional for most survey, field research but are often mandated for experimental research. The general rule is, the greater the risk of potential harm to subjects, the greater the need for a written consent statement. In sum, there are many reasons to get informed consent and few reasons not to get it.
4. Principle of Justice/Creating New Inequities--The principle holds that people who are equal in relevant respects should be treated equally. The positive results of research should be shared with all. For example, a researcher has a new treatment for people with a AIDS. The treatment group receives the drug but not the control group. Thus, those who receive a placebo may die of the disease. Is it ethical to deny subjects who have been randomly assigned to the control group the potentially life-saving treatment?
5. Privacy, Anonymity and Confidentiality--researchers must take precautions to protect subjects' privacy. The right to privacy is the individual's right to decide when, were, to whom, and to what extend their attitudes, beliefs and behavior will be revealed.
Settings that are considered private are homes, personal offices, bathrooms, closed meetings, jury deliberations, and physicians' examining rooms.
A. Privacy--eavesdropping on conversations and observing people in quasi-private areas raises ethical concerns. The ethical researcher violates privacy only to the minimum degree necessary and only for legitimate research purposes. In addition, the researcher protects the information on research subjects from public disclosure. In field studies people are examined in public places but some places are more private than others (e.g., bathroom behavior articles). In experimental research researchers sometimes use two-way mirrors or hidden microphones to "spy" on subjects. Survey researchers invade a person's privacy when they probe into beliefs, backgrounds and behaviors (e.g., had a researcher who wanted to tape record couples discussion of sex). On some level researchers must transgress the privacy of subjects in order to study their behavior so they must take as many precautions as possible.
B. Anonymity--researchers protect privacy by not disclosing a subject's identity after information is gathered. Anonymity means that subjects remain anonymous or nameless. It also means that the information they provided can not reveal their identity in anyway.
C. Confidentiality--means that information may have names attached to it, but the researcher holds it in confidence or keeps it secret from the public. The information is not released in a way that permits linking specific individuals to specific responses and is publicly presented only in an aggregate form. A researcher should never use "anonymous" in a way that is or seems to be synonymous with "confidential".
II. Integrity During Execution of a Study
This refers to honesty and accuracy. I am referring to a breach of integrity resulting in errors or inaccuracies in the data or results of a study. It can run the gamut from minor unintentional errors to outright falsification of the data or the results.
A. Do not tamper with the data
Honestly report what your findings are. Do not leave out important pieces of information.
B. Provide compete description of the procedures.
C. All materials for the study should be available upon request.
D. Conclusions should fit the data.
III. Conclusion
Research ethics are a set of moral principles against which the actions of scientists are judged. They are no hard and fast do's and don'ts; rather, they pose dilemmas for researchers, offering choices and opportunities to weigh the costs and benefits of actions and decisions.