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The Ethics of
Social Research
Why Is Ethical Practice Important?
Ethical discussions usually remain detached or marginalized from discussions of research projects. In fact, some researchers consider this aspect of research as an afterthought. Yet, the moral integrity of the researcher is a critically important aspect of ensuring that the research process and a researcher’s findings are trust- worthy and valid. The term ethics derives from the Greek word ethos, meaning “character.” To engage with the ethical dimension of your research requires asking yourself several important questions:
- What moral principles guide your research?
- How do ethical issues influence your selection of a research problem?
- How do ethical issues affect how you conduct your research—the design of your study, your sampling procedure, and so on?
- What responsibility do you have toward your research subjects? For example, do you have their informed consent to participate in your project?
- What ethical issues/dilemmas might come into play in deciding what research findings you publish?
- Will your research directly benefit those who participated in the study?
A consideration of ethics needs to be a critical part of the substructure of the research process from the inception of your problem to the interpretation and publish- ing of the research findings.Yet, this aspect of the research process does not often appear in the diagrams of the models of research we discussed in Chapter 3. A brief history of the ethical aspects of research will better help us understand why this still remains so.
CHAPTER 4
A Short History of Ethics in Research
The history of the development of the field of ethics in research, unfortunately, has largely been built on egregious and disastrous breaches of humane ethical values. A journey through this history can provide valuable insights into the state of con- temporary research ethics institutions and codes that currently guide social science and biomedical research.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
The Tuskegee syphilis study was conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) beginning in 1932. The study examined untreated cases of latent syphilis in human subjects to determine the “natural course” of the disease. Four hundred African American males from Tuskegee, Alabama, who already had syphilis, were recruited for this study, along with a matched sample of 200 noninfected males. The subjects were not asked to provide their informed consent to participate in this project. Those infected with syphilis in the early 1930s were given the standard treatment at that time, which consisted of administering “heavy metals.” However, when antibiotics became available in the 1940s and it was evident that this treat- ment would improve a person’s chances for recovery, antibiotic treatment was withheld from the infected subjects, even though the researchers knew that if left untreated, the disease would definitely progress to increased disability and even- tually early death. According to some reports, “on several occasions, the USPHS actually sought to prevent treatment” (Heintzelman, 2001, p. 49). The experiment lasted more than four decades, and it was not until 1972, prompted by exposure from the national media, that government officials finally ended the experiment. By that time, “74 of the test subjects were still alive; at least 28, but perhaps more than 100 had died directly from advanced syphilis” (p. 49). There was a govern- ment investigation of the entire project launched in mid-1972, and a review panel “found the study ‘ethically unjustified’ and argued that penicillin should have been provided to the men” (p. 49). At no time in the course of this project were subjects asked to give their consent to participate in the study. They were not specifically told about the particulars of what the study would entail. In fact, those who participated did not even volunteer for the project. Instead, they were deceived into thinking
they were getting free treatment from government doctors for a serious disease. It was never explained that the survey was designed to detect syphilis.... Subjects were never told they had syphilis, the course of the disease, or the treatment, which consisted of spinal taps. (Heintzelman, 2001, p. 51)
In his book Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, author James Jones (1993, as cited in Heintzelman, 2001) notes that the subjects in the Tuskegee experiment had a blind trust in the medical community. As one subject from the experiment notes, “We trusted them because of what we thought they could do for
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the annals of behavioral and social scientific research as well. Perhaps one of the most egregious comes from a 1963 research project concerning “obedience to authority,” conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram wanted to understand the conditions under which individuals obey authority figures. His research protocol called for deceiving volunteer subjects into thinking they were involved in an experiment on the impact of punishment on memory. Volunteers first read a series of word associations to individuals (who were confederates— secretly part of Milgram’s team) under a variety of experimental conditions: (1) they could not see or hear the confederate; (2) they could hear the confederate protest but not see the confederate; (3) they could hear and see the confederate; (4) same as three except the subject was required to place the confederate’s hand on a shock plate. If the confederates were unable to repeat the words back, volunteers were asked to administer what they thought was an “electric shock” (it was actually fake) to them, increasing the voltage for each wrong answer to see if shocking would in fact enhance learning. Subjects had a fake voltage meter in front of them with readings “from slight to severe shock,” with a sign posted next to the meter that warned about the danger of using this equipment. Some sub- jects protested, on hearing confederates complain about pain and other medical problems. Even though some volunteers wanted to quit the experiment, the researcher in charge insisted that they continue, saying the researcher would take the responsibility. Some subjects, however, did not protest and even went on to administer what they considered the highest and potentially lethal shock to a con- federate, even when they had received no feedback that the person was even alive (Milgram, 1963). Stanley Milgram’s experiment deceived his volunteer subjects and failed to obtain their informed consent. The protocol of this experiment did not allow subjects to quit even when some protested and asked that it be stopped. In addition, some subjects experienced psychological distress knowing they actu- ally could administer what would be considered a lethal shock to another human being. This experiment was partially replicated more than 40 years later by Jerry Burger (2009). Burger’s results differed little from Milgram’s original findings in that more than 70% of Burger’s respondents administered up to 150 volts to the confederate. Burger received the green light from his university’s ethics board by making some specific changes to Milgram’s original protocol that made sure that all his respon- dents were screened for psychological stress and that they would be debriefed right after the end of the experiment. He also limited the voltage reading maximum shock to 150 volts. In spite of these protocol changes, one should ask whether or not this experi- ment was ethical. Respondents still needed to deal with the postexperimental real- ity that they were capable of administering a shock up to 150 volts to another human being. Does the end goal of this study justify the means? Unfortunately, when the Tuskegee and Milgram experiments began, there were no review boards to oversee the goals of these projects. It was not until the mid- 1960s that the U.S. federal government began the process of developing a set of
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official rules governing the conduct of research, partly in response to such medical abuses as the Tuskegee experiment and others (see Beecher, 1966; Jones, 1981). This ultimately led to the passage of the National Research Act by the U.S. Congress in
- This act set up an Office for the Protection of Research Risks (OPRR) and ultimately resulted in a set of guidelines known as the Common Rule , which was widely adopted by federal agencies (Alvino, 2003, p. 898). The Common Rule man- dated, among other things, that any institution receiving federal funds for research must establish an institutional review committee. These committees, known as institutional review boards (IRBs) , have the job of watching over all research pro- posals that involve working with human subjects and animals. Universities and col- leges that receive federal funding for research on human subjects are required by federal law to have review boards or forfeit their federal funding. IRBs are respon- sible for carrying out U.S. government regulations proposed for human research. They must determine whether the benefits of a study outweigh its risks, whether consent procedures have been carefully carried out, and whether any group of indi- viduals has been unfairly treated or left out of the potential positive outcomes of a given study (Beyrer & Kass, 2002). This is, of course, important in a hierarchically structured society where we cannot simply assume racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism are not present in research.^1 Currently, professional associations for each discipline, such as the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Sociological Association (ASA), and the American Psychological Association (APA), outline their own general ethical guidelines relevant to their disciplines, which elaborate and sometimes extend federal guidelines. Each of these associations has a specific Web site address that dis- cusses a range of specific ethical concerns for each of these professions. The American Psychological Association’s Web site (http://www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html), for example, outlines specific ethical categories of conduct from “general principles” of professional conduct, which deal with issues such as integrity and justice, to more practice-specific concerns, such as privacy and confidentiality of patients and research subjects. There are also ethical guidelines on record keeping and fees, as well as on issues that may come up in a therapeutic situation, such as those especially per- taining to sexual intimacy with clients and therapy with former sexual partners. There are also guidelines for resolving ethical issues such as discrimination and han- dling of complaints.
How Are Research Subjects Protected Today?
Informed consent covers a range of procedures that must be implemented when your study includes human subjects. Human subjects in your study must be informed about the nature of your research project, and you must obtain their con- sent prior to their participation in your study. This information is usually contained in an informed consent letter that each respondent in your study needs to sign; by doing so, respondents indicate that they have read the letter and agree to participate in your research project.
The Ethics of Social Research 63
The Ethics of Social Research 65
STUDENT RESEARCH PROJECTSTUDENT RESEARCH PROJECT
Informed Consent Letter
Title: Drinking Patterns and Attitudes Among College Seniors
Principal Investigator and Contact Information: Here you would place the name of your supervisor and his or her contact information if this is part of a student research project.
Student Researcher’s Name: You would place your name, college, and class year here.
Purpose of Your Study:
Example: I am a senior sociology major at Boston College. This semester, I am con- ducting a research project as part of my sociology honors thesis. I am working closely with my supervisor, Dr. Sharlene Hesse-Biber, who will be the main contact person for this project. I would like to know if you would be willing to take part in a research study on drinking patterns of college seniors. The project is part of a larger nation- wide study that seeks to gather data on the frequency and extent of alcohol use among graduating seniors, as well as to understand what you consider to be the fac- tors within the college environment that serve to promote as well as to impede the drinking behaviors of college students in general.
Procedures:
You will be asked to complete an online survey questionnaire that will ask you about your drinking patterns and attitudes toward drinking in college. We are also inter- ested in your opinions regarding the general drinking environment at your college.
Confidentiality:
All the information you provide will be strictly confidential, and your name will not appear on the questionnaire. Instead, your questionnaire will contain an identification number that is known only by the principal investigator of this study. This identification number is used to note that you have returned your questionnaire and will not be attached to the general survey itself. Once you complete the online survey, just click on the “exit” button on the last page of your survey, and your questionnaire will be auto- matically sent to us via e-mail, without any identification of the sender’s e-mail address.
Note About Voluntary Nature of Participation and Statement About Compensation:
Your participation is voluntary. You may refuse to participate or may discontinue your participation at any time during the online survey. While we cannot compensate you for your time, your participation will be invaluable to our project as we seek an understanding of alcohol use on college campuses and the range of factors in the college environment that exacerbate drinking patterns of college students.
(Continued)
Informed Consent: The Principle and the Reality
A major principle underlying many of the ethical policies that have historically developed around the issue of how to treat research subjects has been the use of informed consent, the right of subjects to decide—free of pressure or constraint and in a fully informed manner—whether or not they will be involved in any research endeavor (Faden & Beauchamp, 1986). Some ethicists question the extent to which informed consent has lived up to its promise (Cassileth, Zupkis, Sutton- Smith, & March, 1980). Some research has found that research subjects do not always understand the medical or social aspects of the clinical project in which they are participating, and some do not even know that they may in fact be participat- ing in a research trial (Lynoe, Sandlund, Dahlqvist, & Jacobsson, 1991; see also Appelbaum, Roth, Lidz, Benson, & Winslade, 1987). As we have seen earlier in this chapter, in many instances, researchers fail to fully disclose to research subjects the
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(Continued)
Information About This Study: You will have the opportunity to ask, and to have answered, all your questions about this research by e-mailing or calling the principal investigator, whose contact infor- mation is listed at the top of this letter. All inquiries are confidential.
Participant’s Agreement Statement: If you agree to participate in our study, we would appreciate your signing your name and date to this form and sending it back to us in the stamped and addressed enve- lope within one week of your receipt of this letter.
I have read the information provided above. I voluntarily agree to participate in this study. After it is signed, I understand I will receive a survey form via e-mail.
Name Date As soon as we receive your informed consent letter, we will e-mail you the online sur- vey to fill out.
Thank you. Sincerely,
Your name goes here Your supervisor’s name goes here
with your affiliation with his or her affiliation
Letter B is much shorter and provides few details concerning the research goals.
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(Continued)
This research project will study preteen and adolescent attitudes about body image and self-esteem. These are some of the questions that we will explore:
- From whom and where do preteens learn perceptions of body image and self- esteem? For example, what role do peers and the mass media play in influencing preteens’ and adolescents’ attitudes concerning their weight and body image?
- What factors (if any) appear to “protect” preteen and adolescent girls against feelings of low self-esteem, and what factors (if any) contribute to a depressed sense of body esteem?
I envision this study as a unique opportunity. As I said earlier, we need to give young black women and the black community a stronger voice. I believe that my proj- ect can accomplish that. Yet even more important, I believe that providing an oppor- tunity for the girls to get together to chat with friends and peers about issues of black identity and self-esteem will serve as a mechanism for black female empowerment. Attached you will find a consent form which is to be, on agreement, signed by your daughter and yourself and brought to the Health Center the day of the inter- view. The interview is completely voluntary and confidential. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call me at home: ______ or work: _______. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Sincerely,
_____________________ Ph.D. Chair, Department of Sociology
Professor
LETTER B LETTER B
Dear Parents: My name is ____________ and I am a sociologist and teacher at _______ College. I am conducting a study on body image and self-esteem among African American and white preteen and adolescent girls. I plan on having the girls meet at the Health Center for pizza and soda after school in groups of three or four to chat about self-esteem and body image. If your daughter
Letter B contains the minimum information that can be given to respondents. Both letters ensure respondent confidentiality , that is, their names cannot be used in any written material or discussions concerning the research project, and inter- view materials will also be stored in a safe place free from disclosure. This means the researcher and others working on the project will not know the identity of the respondent (e.g., a respondent returns a survey questionnaire with no name on it). These letters, however, point to some of the political dimensions involved in cre- ating an informed consent letter. To the extent that they reveal the way they will conduct their research and are willing to share their research goals, researchers may be attempting to protect or not remain tied down to a particular research goal(s). For example, it may not always be in the interests of the researcher to be forthcom- ing regarding full disclosure. Some researchers may even go out of their way to develop a cover story to explain the research project, and this may be built into the original design of the research project:
The selection or invention of details to constitute the cover story and convince intended respondents is an element in the design of a research project. That requires skills of persuasion. Investigators develop a sense of what details allay fears and what prompt suspicions. As in other types of negotiation, such as bargaining over salaries, the initiating party uses a gambit declaring a position which it may concede and which supposes an opposition of interests between the negotiating parties. The investigator will reveal further information if required but in many cases subjects will not be briefed to ask pertinent ques- tions and the project will move on quickly from negotiation to interview. (Homan, 1992, p. 324)
If respondents initially refuse to participate in a research project, rather than accepting the right of the researched to act autonomously, this is sometimes viewed as a failure on the part of the researcher, who may then try to break down “the
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chooses to participate, with your permission, the interview will take no more than 45 minutes, and her participation will be completely voluntary and confidential. Attached you will find a consent form which is to be, on agreement, signed by your daughter and yourself and brought to the Health Center the day of the interview. I appreciate the opportunity to interview your daughter. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call me at home: ______ or work: ________.
Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Sincerely,
_____________________ Ph.D. Chair, Department of Sociology
New South Wales in Australia, where she focuses on gender and social policy. Maddison encountered several problems when trying to use informed consent in her ethno- graphic work with a feminist student group. Let’s join Maddison behind the scenes.
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BEHIND THE SCENES WITH SARAH MADDISONBEHIND THE SCENES WITH SARAH MADDISON
A couple of years ago, I was engaged in a project researching a group of young student feminists drawn from various university campuses in New South Wales. The Cross Campus Women’s Network (CCWN) was a loose coalition of women who met on a fortnightly basis. At each meeting, there would be between five and ten women and, with the exception of the convenor, these could often be a different group of women each fortnight. It was this changing roll call at each meeting that created a major obstacle for the ethical conduct of this research: Although I had carefully explained the purpose of my research and sought permission to attend and participate the first time I went along, there were women at subsequent meetings who missed out on my spiel and became very suspicious of my presence and my intentions. So they kicked me out! The convenor e-mailed me and asked me not to attend any more meetings until they had resolved this issue between themselves (apparently there were differing views about the merits of my research within the group). I was allowed to send an e-mail to the group explaining myself again and then I just had to sit and wait. Time to reflect on power (shared), clarity (and confusion), and con- sent (given—and taken away again). I have to say I felt pretty foolish—but in actual fact it was my fear of appearing foolish that had put me in this situation to begin with. As a researcher wanting to begin the “participant” part of the participant observation process, I was reluctant to continually draw attention to my researcher status by outlining my project every time I saw a new face. I really wanted to blend into the group and participate in meetings as if I was “one of them,” not an outsider. More than anything I wanted them to for- get what I was doing there so that I could somehow observe, participate, and con- sume what “really” went on in their meetings. I rushed in there with the arrogant assumption that the merits and importance of my research were obvious to all and the belief that no one would not want to participate. So stupid—and so wrong. They were right to kick me out because I was behaving very badly, and totally unethically. I had forgotten for a moment that the presence of a researcher always and inevitably changes the dynamics and practices of a group and that my very presence made the group a different group to the one that had existed before I strutted through the door. More important, I had deluded myself that, as a par- ticipant observer, I could somehow, sometimes take off my researcher hat and be “one of them.” Of course I knew all these things before I began, but in my enthusiasm to get the project started, I had left my ethical practice at the door as I barged on through. (Continued)
There is a great deal we can learn from this example. Specifically, Maddison shows how ethical practice is an ongoing consideration. Moreover, ethical issues and informed consent provide researchers with an opportunity to learn about themselves and to develop as researchers—ethics are a doorway to reflexivity.
Beyond Informed Consent: What Are
the Ethical Dilemmas in Social Research?
Although the principles of informed consent may be relatively clear, the actual practice of ethics in a given research setting can be complex and may pose a myr- iad of fundamental ethical questions that a researcher must navigate, often without clear guidance from a given set of ethical codes. A discussion of some of the kinds of ethical issues that may arise in qualitative social science research may serve as a guide to thinking about these issues.
The Ethical Predicament of Deception in Research
Some researchers argue that their research must be conducted in a covert man- ner to obtain the information they need to understand certain social phenomena. For example, some researchers have gone undercover to study underground cul- tures such as drug cultures (see Williams, 1996) and used deception to find out
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(Continued) My delusions of invisibility made me forget the first and most golden rule of any sort of research— consent. How could my research have any integrity if even one member of the group did not realize I was a researcher? How dishonest of me! How misleading! I could really only be grateful that these young women were feisty and confident enough to boot me out while they considered their choice to participate in the project. There would be many other groups of potential research subjects who would not have the confidence to ask a researcher to leave their group. This aware- ness made me reflect anew on the significance of power in research relationships and the role that consent must play in clarifying these power relationships. After a few weeks I was informed that they had decided to let me come back, and I returned gratefully and with my tail between my legs. I had learnt my lesson. Even though I had thought I had been completely open and transparent about my project, I had been careless about ensuring that every member of the group had a good understanding of who I was, why I was there, and what the research might achieve— an essential step for ethical research in which informed consent is crucial to the legit- imacy of the entire project. This is not a lesson I will forget in a hurry, and I am thankful for these young women’s patience in helping me learn it again.
(1982), conducting fieldwork in Park Forest, a suburb near Chicago; in Boston’s West End; and in Levittown, a New Jersey suburb, gives his personal reflections on the anxiety he experienced in what he finds is “the deception inherent in partici- pant observation”:
Once the fieldworker has gained entry, people tend to forget he is there and let down their guard, but he does not; however much he seems to participate, he is really there to observe and even to watch what happens when people let down their guard. He is involved in personal situations in which he is, emo- tionally speaking, always taking and never giving, for he is there to learn and, thus, to take from the people he studies, whereas they are always giving infor- mation, and are rarely being given anything. Of course they derive some satis- faction from being studied, but when they ask the participant observer to give—for example, help or advice—he must usually refuse in order to main- tain his neutrality. Moreover, even though he seems to give of himself when he participates, he is not really doing so and, thus, deceives the people he studies. He pretends to participate emotionally when he does not; he observes even when he does not appear to be doing so and like the formal interviewer, he asks questions with covert purposes of which his respondents are likely to be unaware. In short, psychologically, the participant observer is acting dishonestly; he is deceiving people about his feelings and in observing when they do not know it, he is spying on them. (p. 59)
Gans represents a particular point of view on the role of the researcher as par- ticipant in the fieldwork experience. The idea that researchers should remain neutral and “detached” from the research subject tells us that they aspire to the goal of objectivity in the research process. This objectivity then is enhanced by deception. Yet, as we have seen, this frame on the research process is one of many paradigms one can bring to the fieldwork experience. There are those who believe researchers do not need to maintain distance between themselves and the researched. Ann Oakley (1981) critiques this model of neutrality and instead argues for bridging this divide through empathy and affinity. Other ethnogra- phers feel that this form of closeness between researcher and researched also has its problems and that one can become too close to respondents, which in turn can create a series of conflicts and deceptions as well. Ethnographer Judith Stacey (1991) comments:
The irony I now perceive is that ethnographic method exposes subjects to far greater danger and exploitation than do more positivist, abstract, and “mas- culinist” research methods. And the greater the intimacy—the greater the apparent mutuality of the researcher/researched relationship—the greater is the danger. (p. 114)
Stacey (1991) notes that the more involved she became with her respondents, the further exposed she became to situations within the field that left her open to the
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possibility of manipulating and betraying her respondents (p. 113). Thus, personal engagement with research subjects on an interpersonal level can lead to unantici- pated and unintended deception that can actually raise even more the possibility of undue power, influence, and authority in the research process. So we can see that issues of disclosure and trust are actually very complex. Some might argue that a certain amount of strategic deception is needed when researchers are especially interested in “studying up” (see Korn, 1997). The study of elites is not a common practice within the social sciences (for an exception, see Hertz & Imber, 1995). The elite and semi-elite populations hold key positions within society, yet their activities and power remain invisible to the average citizen. Elites often protect their privacy through a myriad of self-imposed barriers, rang- ing from unlisted phones and e-mail accounts to the hiring of staff to screen their calls and contacts and security personnel to prevent unwanted contact with those outside their elite culture. Adler and Adler (2002) note that current IRB and pro- fessional associations, which fear lawsuits, have developed codes of ethics that now ban all aspects of covert research, using the argument that it is almost impossible to obtain informed consent. In addition, these boards cannot protect researchers from revealing the identity of their respondents if they are asked to do so by officials investigating their research findings. Adler and Adler (2002) argue that ethics boards have overstepped their function, resulting in the unanticipated outcome of favoring the dominant classes over the weaker, saying that “powerful, elite groups can now better hide their mechanisms of control, while weak and powerless groups have lost the ability to tell their stories from their own perspective” (p. 40). These researchers lament the fact that the ban- ning of covert research such as that done by Erving Goffman in his classic work Asylums (1961), providing a bird’s-eye view of the treatment of the mentally ill by those who care for them, or research on the activities of control agencies such as the police as carried out by Gary Marx (1988), will no longer be possible under the new ethics guidelines. Haggerty (2004) has identified what he terms an “ethics creep”—an expansion and intensification of ethical rules and regulations—that has taken over social science research “in the name of ethics” and in his perception has resulted in an overregulation of the field (p. 391). The issue of ethics creep has found its way into the research in which students engage. If you are a student researcher who plans to publish your research paper or present your research findings at a con- ference, then it is imperative that your research project be formally approved by your college or university’s IRB. Very often, students who conduct research for “educational purposes only” are not required to obtain “official” IRB approval. Their supervisor’s ethics oversight is usually sufficient to warrant their carrying out their research project. If you decide to go forward with IRB approval, you may find that even when your student project is considered to be a very low risk to your research participants (in that it does not contain any deception, it does not work with a vulnerable pop- ulation, and the level of invasiveness of respondents’ privacy is low), your project’s approval by the IRB may run into trouble. The following are some of the ethical
The Ethics of Social Research 75
We found it more difficult to achieve rapport where we did not spontaneously feel empathy with our interviewees. For example in an early study of Youth Training Schemes (YTS), Jean felt she established a “genuine,” if shallow rapport with the YTS trainees and with the more conscientious employers who took training seriously, because she was “on their side.” But with the more exploita- tive employers and trainers (who provided neither jobs nor training), she knew she was faking rapport to “betray” them into revealing their double stan- dards, and sometimes whilst smiling at them she almost smiled to herself, thinking: “What a revealing quote”.... Julie felt uncomfortable and personally compromised when she found that, in order to obtain a “good” interview, it seemed necessary to smile, nod and appear to collude with views she strongly opposed. (Duncombe & Jessop, 2002, p. 115)
Researchers are human just like everyone else. Accordingly, we all bring our own likes, dislikes, emotions, values, and motivations to our research projects. It is unre- alistic to expect that you will always like those you research or that you will always naturally feel 100% engaged. This being said, bear in mind that it is you, the researcher, who has initiated this process and involved others (your subjects). Consider this carefully as you contemplate your ethical obligations to your research participants, but as you think through these issues, do so with your own “human- ness” in mind—be realistic and fair to all involved.
How Can I Observe Ethical
Values in My Research Practice?
Ethics exist within a social context. The ethical dilemmas we discussed in this chapter serve to remind us of the importance of including an ethical perspective in the very foundation of our research project. Ethical rules cannot possibly account for all events that may arise in a given project. Rubin and Rubin (1995) note that ethical guidelines do not begin to cover all of the ethical dilemmas you may face in the practice of social research:
You cannot achieve ethical research by following a set of preestablished proce- dures that will always be correct. Yet, the requirement to behave ethically is just as strong in qualitative interviewing as in other types of research on humans— maybe even stronger. You must build ethical routines into your work. You should carefully study codes of ethics and cases of unethical behavior to sensi- tize yourself to situations in which ethical commitments become particularly salient. Throughout your research, keep thinking and judging what are your eth- ical obligations. (Rubin & Rubin, 1995, p. 96, as quoted in Patton, 2002, p. 411)
A useful distinction we might keep in mind here is the difference between what Homan (1992) terms ethical codes and ethical values. By agreeing to comply with ethical codes , as outlined in an informed consent proposal, a researcher is not
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absolved from adhering to the underlying ethical values contained in these codes, yet very often “they invite observance in the letter rather than in the principle” (Homan, 1992, p. 325). Homan reminds us that the danger is that many researchers think their moral obligation begins and ends with the signing of the letter of con- sent. In some cases, an informed consent letter is seen as protecting the researcher more than the researched. One anthropologist notes:
I fear that informed consent, when mechanically applied using a form or some verbal formula, becomes more of a protection for the researcher than the researched. Informed consent obtained in this way is unilateral rather than bilateral and protects the researcher against charges from participants that they did not understand fully the intent or outcome of the research. (Fluehr- Lobban, 1998, p. 199)
Ethics does not exist in a vacuum. As King, Henderson, and Stein (1999) note,
The ethics of human subjects research may be universal but is at the same time deeply particularized, so that what autonomy or informed consent or confi- dentiality or even benefit and harm means depends on the circumstances. The circumstances do not determine whether any of these “Western” moral con- cepts applies, but how. (p. 213)
Key Ethical Issues Generated by Student
Research and Strategies for Overcoming Them
Novice student researchers who conduct qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods research projects often encounter a particular set of ethical issues. This section deals with some common ethical issues student researchers often confront and how these might be addressed by both the students and their faculty research supervisors. The following table is an adaptation of a range of ethical issues student researchers may confront as they begin their research project, as well as some strategies for over- coming these ethical dilemmas. We suggest a range of ways faculty supervisors of student research can facilitate ethical decision making for their student researchers. Table 4.1 is adapted from the work of Gough, Lawton, Madill, and Stratton (2003). We can note from this table that an important strategy for student researchers who want to conduct a qualitative project is for them to launch a short pilot study. A student who plans, for example, to interview college seniors regarding their drinking experiences in college might begin with just one interview. This will allow both students and supervisors to assess the student’s skill and comfort level in con- ducting an interview, and it also provides an opportunity for the researcher and supervisor to talk about any specific issues or concerns that might have come up during and after the pilot interview. To make the most use of the pilot interview, it might be good for students to write a short memo on their interview experience and to record their reflections on how the interview went from their point of view as well as that of their participant. These reflective memos might also be written at several points along the data collection stage of the project. Student researchers
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