CONDUCTING ETHICAL RESEARCH BUSN 364 – Week 9 Özge Can

Ethics in Research  Ethics:  What is or is not legitimate (right or wrong) to do  What “moral” the research procedure involves  No absolutes, but agreed-on principles  Many ethical issues require to balance two values: 1. Pursuit of scientific knowledge 2. Rights of those being studied or others in society

Ethics in Research  Ethics begins and ends with the researcher  Values and integrity of the researcher  Intense pressures on the researcher to:  Build a career, publish, advance knowledge, gain prestige, impress other people, hold on to a job and etc.  No one awards you for being ethical and doing the right thing

Scientific Misconduct  Engaging in research fraud, plagiarism, or other unethical conduct that deviated from the accepted practices for doing and reporting research  Research Fraud => Fakeing or inventing data that were not really collected or falsely reporting how research was conducted  Plagiarism => fraud that involves stealing the ideas or writings of another or using them without citing the source

Avoiding Plagiarism  defined in The Concise Oxford Dictionary as:  To “take and use another person’s (thoughts, writings, inventions...) as one’s own.  A serious and punishable academic offense  Taking material in a wholesale way from other written materials or from websites is plagiarism!  You need to give appropriate reference to the resources you use

Unethical Research Practices in US: Cases of violations of research ethics investigated by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity ( )

Learning Activities:  Read: Avoiding Plagarism:   Watch: “Do Scientists Cheat?”   Read: Online Ethics Center: Many case examples for scientific misconduct 

Code of Ethics  Principles and guidelines developed by professional organizations to guide research practice and clarify the line between ethical and unethical research  Nuremberg Code (1947) – Human subject research  Universal Declaration uf Human Rights, UN (1948)  Declaration of Helsinki (1964) – Human experimentation in medicine

Some “Code of Ethics” Examples:  British Sociological Association (BSA), Statement of Ethical Practice:   Social Research Association (SRA), Ethical Guidelines:   American Psychological Association (APA), Ethical Principles:   American Sociological Associaition (ASA), Code of Ethics: 

Ethical Issues Involving Research Participants  Origins of research participant protection => violations of basic human rights in the name of science  “Medical experiments” by Nazi researchers conducted on Jews and other people at WWII  The Tuskegee Syphillis Study in the US ( ): YMdaEdbcg&feature=relatedhttp:// YMdaEdbcg&feature=related  Many other examples

Cases of Ethical Controversy  Milgram’s Obedience Experiment (1963)  “Teacher” was to test the “learner”s memory of word lists and gives electric shock if the learner gives incorrect asnwers; and the level of the shocks rises  The shocks are not real but the teacher (volunteer) was not aware of it  The researcher was present and make comments such as “you must continue” to the teacher in spite of increasing cries of pain  The % of subjects who would shock to dangerous levels was dramatically higher than expected

Cases of Ethical Controversy  Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment (1972)  Male students divided into two role-playing groups: guards and prisoners for two weeks  A simulated prison in the basement of a Stanford University building. Guards are told to maintain a reasonable degree of order; prisoners are locked up  The volunteers became too caught up in their roles: Prisoners became passive and inorganized while guards became aggressive and dehumanizing  By the 6th date, Zimbardo called off the experiement: The risk of permanent psychological harm or even physical harm.

Cases of Ethical Controversy  Milgram’s experiment:   Zimbardo’s experiment:  ure=related ure=related  Discovering Psychology series: The power of the situation:  9expand.html?pop=yes&pid= expand.html?pop=yes&pid=1516

Ethical Issues Involving Research Participants  Four main areas in the discussion of ethical research : 1. Whether there is any harm to participants 2. Whether there is a lack of informed consent 3. Whether deception is involved 4. Whether there is invasion of privacy

1. Possible Harm to Participants  Physical harm  Phsychological abuse, stress or loss of self- esteem  Legal harm  Other (e.g. economical harm)

2. Informed Consent  Never force anyone into participating a research; all research participation must be voluntary  It is not enough to obtain permission: People need to know what they are being asked to participate in  There is often a written document  explains aspects of the research to participants and ask their voluntary agreement to participate

3. Deception Use of deception  Researchers sometimes deceive or lie to participants, especially in field and experimental research  Why => if participants knew the true purpose of a study, they will modify their behavior  But; there should be legitimate methodological reasons to misrepresent our actions or true intentions

3. Deception  Never preferable if we can accomplish the same thing without deception  We should always make debriefing:  Informing participants of the purpose of the research, disclosing deception and answering questions about the research after the research ends

4. Privacy  Privacy: Researchers invade a person’s privacy when they share with the public the personal intimate details about the participant  Takes two forms:  Anonymity  Confidentiality

4. Privacy  Anonymity => The ethical protection that participants remain nameless.  It protects the identity of specific individuals from being known  Confidentiality => We hold daha collected and other specific information on participants in “confidence” or keep it secret from the public  Results presented only in an aggreagte form (e.g. percentages, means)

Basic Principles of Ethical Research  Responsible individual  No personal gain  Informed consent  Honor confidentiality/anonymity  No coercion/humiliation  Avoid deception – if able  Detect and remove negative consequences  Anticipate repercussions  Transparency in sponsorship  Cooperation with host nation  Transparency of results  Consistency between data and results  High methodological standards

Class Activity – A Research Case  Mary Tudor at the University of Iowa (1939) => study on children in an orphanage  Hypothesis: stuttering results from children’s somehow reinforced for it.  Two groups: 1) stutters; 2) normal speaking  Under the guise of providing speech theraphy she created subgroups in which children were either told  they have speech difficulties or  their speech is progressing very well

 What ethical principles violated in this research?  Pysical and pyschological harm  Little responsibility for people’s rights, or concern for their welfare  Invasion of privacy  No informed consent, no debriefing  No follow-up to fix any problems developed  Great deal of deception

Ethics and Sponsored Research  You may conduct research for a sponsor:  An employer, a government agency, or a private firm  Special problems arise when someone else is paying for a study; especially in applied research  Misuse in sponsored research:  Arriving at particular findings  Limits on the research designs/techniques used  Hiding the true sponsor

Common types of misuse in applied research: