[Instructor] Hello, folks.
Welcome to this week's lecture,
which is on the ethics of social science.
So we'll be learning about some of the key issues
around doing ethical research
so that you are able to both recognize,
and most importantly,
conduct social science research
within ethical boundaries and norms.
In this class, we are going to look at
the ethics behind social science research.
So we'll look at the key factors that we should look at
to assure that the work that we are doing is ethical
and learn a bit about some past controversies,
which have led to the need for these sorts of measures,
and look a little bit at the IRB,
the Institutional Review Board,
which is the organization at UVM which helps to ensure
that all the research that is done is done ethically.
There are many reasons why it is important
that the research that we do is ethical.
So here is a list of issues that we have to keep in mind
when we conduct social science research,
and I will go through each one.
A cornerstone of ethical research
is voluntary participation.
That means that you cannot force somebody
to be a part of a research study or project.
You cannot coerce them.
So if I were to say to you,
I am requiring you to be a research subject in a project
that doesn't have anything to do with this class,
and if you don't, you're going to get a failing grade,
that would be coercion.
I'm not allowed to do that.
Of course, I'm just saying this as an example,
and I would lose my job, I think, if I were to do that.
Part of voluntary participation as well
is that it's important that your objects know
how the research will be used and any benefits that they
or society at large may gain.
The next principle that we should mention is no harm.
So we do not want to harm our research subject.
And a lot of the motivation was because of past experiments,
such as experiments where the Nazis
did experiments on prisoners.
And even though medical knowledge
may have been advanced by this,
it was done in a horrifically unethical way.
There's also the famous Tuskegee syphilis study,
where African-American men were told
that they were getting a treatment for syphilis,
which is a sexually transmitted disease.
And in truth,
these patients were not getting
any effective treatment at all,
and this was done so that researchers could study
the development of the disease as it progressed
from when someone gets it, all the way through.
And again, even though medical science
may have been advanced by this,
the ends don't justify the the means
that both of these are rightly seen
as being horrible violations.
And I encourage you to learn more about them.
Now, the kind of work that I do as a social scientist
and the kind of work that we will do
and learn how to do in class are certainly not that extreme.
However, there can be a potential to do harm
in social science research,
and we especially wanna make sure
that we do not embarrass the subject,
that we do not endanger their job,
their marriage, their finances, their friendship,
really even their reputation,
nor do we want to harm them psychologically.
And if any deception is used,
then it is very important that we debrief them afterwards.
And as an aside,
I have never used deception in any of my work,
nor will we use any deception in our classwork here.
The absolute cornerstone of ethical research
is informed consent,
where the subject has a really good idea of the benefits
of the study, how they may personally benefit,
how society may benefit, how the research will be used,
as well as any possible risk that they might face.
And oftentimes, we have the subject sign,
or give verbal consent signing a statement
where they give their expressed permission to do so.
And as we go through,
I'm going to give you examples of these,
which then you will use to gain the consent
of the research subjects as we go through our project.
Sometimes we are able to tell our subjects
that their responses will be anonymous.
So anonymous means neither the researcher
nor the readers know who did or said what.
So a mail survey or an online survey
that doesn't track their IP address,
we don't know who said what.
This can be a bit hard,
and then we cannot track who has responded or not.
But it's a good way to ensure that nobody's responses
will come back to harm them in some way,
that if they say something on a survey
that may be controversial, that we don't know who said that,
and therefore it can't be tracked to them.
A slightly lower bar is confidentiality.
And this would be the case more like in an interview,
that if you're interviewing someone,
the researcher will know who said what.
But what you do is make sure
that you do not attribute any statement to any individual.
This requires a training in ethics,
which you will be doing for this class.
It often involves removing identifying info.
So when you have notes or transcripts,
you have an interview,
that you don't have the individual's name
or any way that those statements could be traced back.
And make sure that you know the difference
between confidentiality and anonymity,
and be able to give an example of this.
The next issue is deception.
So sometimes this is done in a lab experiment,
how they may respond to some stimulus.
So for example, I might say in class, again,
this is a purely hypothetical example,
not anything I would actually do,
that you have to stand up on your desk
and recite a poem in order to earn homework points
for that day,
while I'm not actually going to give
or deny any homework points,
I just wanna see if you will do it.
And if you do this, again, we will not do it in this class.
I have never used deception,
nor can I imagine a time when I would, but if you do,
you really have to debrief them and tell them like,
look, I really am not going to take away
or give homework points here.
I just wanted to see how you would react
to my asking about this.
This is a humorous example of some of the elements
of informed consent that we may face.
So this is a clip from a Vermont-made film,
called "A Man with a Plan".
And it's about a Vermont dairy farmer who runs
for the House of Representative,
a man named Fred Tuttle.
And in this scene, the sort of henchman of the incumbent
who's running against Fred comes and he's,
this henchman is trying to get dirt on Fred
and find out bad things that will then embarrass Fred
and harm his candidacy.
And it's a really funny film.
I encourage you, if you ever get a chance, to see it.
But if this is a researcher,
what are some of the elements and where does this person,
this henchman violates standards of ethical research?
And we'll discuss those in class.
Part of ethical research also has to do
with analysis and reporting.
So an ethical researcher will be honest
when they are reporting out what they did, any shortcomings,
they have to list out what are the limitations.
These are often placed in the very end
of a research paper,
being honest about what we found out and what we didn't,
how far we can extrapolate, and things like that.
And report on accidents, even fortuitous ones.
So if you find something out completely by accident,
it's good to be clear and honest
that we were really not intending to learn this,
but through the course of the project,
we learned this new thing.
And based on what we know now,
it is a very important result of the research.
All major universities, all colleges or universities,
especially those that receive any sort of federal funding,
must have an Institutional Review Board.
So this is a board of faculty members and experts
that review research protocols.
So for example, in my work,
I've done this for this class
and any other research project,
I have to tell them in advance what I'm going to do,
what the purpose is, what the benefits are,
what the risks are to my subjects.
I have to show them the research questions,
like the interview guide or the survey
to tell them how I'm going to recruit subjects,
and then have them approve it.
And you will be actually doing a tutorial
and sort of gaining a certification.
And you'll learn about that more at the end of this lecture.
The point of these institutional review boards
is to guarantee that the rights
and interests of the subject.
It's to minimize risks.
Now, many economic and social science studies
are so-called exempt,
in which it's seen that the bar is very low,
that the risks are very minimal.
So when we're asking students about their experience
to think of some past examples with UVM dining,
their attitudes about sustainability,
their experiences with remote or other learning modalities,
really, there isn't a great risk there.
And these tend to be more sort of quickly approved
and with a little bit more leeway.
And we will use a consent process for our class.
So far, what we've been talking about
are pretty straightforward, well-established,
almost no-brainer factors about ethical research,
but there are many cases where you might mend up
in some sort of unethical quandary,
specifically that you find out, probably inadvertently,
about something that one of your subjects is doing
that may be something between illegal and unethical,
such as maybe they are not abiding by good food safety regs.
They are corrupt.
They might be embezzling.
You might find out trade secrets
that the other businesses would really like to know about.
You may witness examples of animal cruelty
or things like that where you see things
that you really think are wrong.
So how would you handle these?
I don't have a right or wrong answer in mind.
And what happens if you turn around and turn them in,
or what happens if you look the other way?
Again, I'm not looking for a specific right or wrong answer,
but as a social scientist,
you may face these kinds of issues.
And we'll discuss them in more length in class.
So this is what we talked about, about ethical issues,
and I look forward to talking to you more about it in class.