-: Hello and welcome to the lecture
on social science research ethics,
where we're gonna be talking about
how to do ethical research,
and what are some of the considerations that go into that.
So we're gonna talk about ethical issues.
We're gonna talk about a few controversies from the past
that have motivated this,
and then the IRB, the Institutional Review Board,
which is part of UVM,
and they ensure that researchers like us
will do ethical research.
So for many reasons,
it's vital that we do research that is ethical,
from everything from avoiding being sued
to just your own personal integrity.
There are many reasons why we wanna make sure
that what we do is ethical.
That not only it has value,
but it does no harm to the subjects of our research.
So we're gonna focus in here on the research subjects,
those that we collect data from,
and we're gonna go through this list of things,
of what we should be concerned about,
as well as being ethical in our analysis and reporting,
and then we're gonna talk about the IRB.
So it's vital that your subjects participate voluntarily,
that it's not ethical for you to force somebody to do it.
So for me to do research and say,
"I will fail you in this class if you don't,"
you know, any sort of threat is not ethical,
and that they have to do it of their own free will.
It's important that you clearly articulate
what is the purpose of the research,
what are any benefits that could come to them
or to society as a whole,
and to not use any coercion.
You know, don't threaten them,
don't say bad things will happen,
like me, don't fail,
you know, I can't fail you if you don't do it.
Or you know, give you a bad grade or anything like that.
That they have to volunteer.
There have been some famous cases of unethical research,
and I'll leave these links here, feel free to look.
But the Nazis conducted experiments on people
in the concentration camps.
And there's a very well known study from Tuskegee,
where African-American men
were deliberately not treated for syphilis
so they could follow the progress of the disease, you know,
and in neither of these cases did the subjects volunteer.
That it was done against their will,
and these are clear sort of motivations
that have led us to the sort of policies and frameworks
that we have now.
So basically, we don't want to harm our subjects.
It's so much more than the two things on the last slide.
We don't want to embarrass them.
We don't want to endanger sort of their job,
their friendships, their marriage,
their finances.
And we don't want to harm them psychologically.
And there have been some studies in the past
where the subjects were harmed psychologically,
and we're gonna talk a little bit soon about
if you ever use deception,
that you have to debrief them at the end
and tell them the truth.
But I'll say a bit more about that.
So the cornerstone of ethical research with human subjects
is called informed consent,
where you clearly tell them what are the benefits to them,
what are the benefits of society,
why is this being done,
and is there any risk to their participation?
And in most cases,
they either verbally or written,
sign or give their written or oral consent,
where they read the information
and then they either sign or they say,
"Yes, I volunteer."
So they give their consent based on a lot of information
about why the study's being done,
what the benefits are,
and if any, if there are any risks to them.
So two similar concepts.
I'm gonna talk about anonymity and confidentiality,
and they are similar, but not exactly the same.
So in neither case do you say,
"This subject, this person's name,
said this response."
Both of these will protect against that.
So when it's anonymous,
neither the researcher nor the readers
of say the research article, knows who said what.
That something like a mail-in or an online survey
where you don't ask for their name,
that nobody knows who said what,
except for the respondent.
Again, this is very common in surveys.
If you're doing something like an interview,
then all that you can say is it will be confidential.
That you do know who said what,
because you were there,
you as the researcher heard them.
So this requires a training like this, in research ethics,
and in many cases you remove the identifying info,
that at very most, if it's important what their role is,
you might say as much as,
"A student said that,"
blah, blah, blah,
or "A faculty member,"
but you don't ever give their name,
that you don't ever attribute what they said
to any individual.
And that is what confidentiality means.
And it'd be good if you could,
that you know the difference and can provide an example.
Sometimes in social science or psychological research,
there's deception,
that you tell somebody something that's not true,
make them think they're doing something,
making them think that there is a consequence
to what they do.
I will say that I have never used deception.
I do not, I can't imagine that I would,
but it has been done.
And if you do, you really have to,
after the fact, tell them about what they did,
what the real reasons were,
fill them in on what the deception is and why.
But we will not be using any deception in this class,
nor have I ever, but it has been done,
and it is possible to do that under certain circumstances.
Have a look at this video clip
and see what are the elements of informed consent here.
Would what this individual does
sort of pass in a review of ethics?
And what would, and what wouldn't,
and why not?
So even once you're done interacting with your subjects,
there are still a lot of ethical issues
that you really wanna be honest about.
What are the shortcomings of your study?
What are the limitations?
And that's very often the last part of the article.
And you wanna report about accidents,
things that you sort of, unexpectedly happened,
even if they are good.
You always wanna be very upfront
about what you did and why,
and sort of what the outcomes are.
So we at UVM are governed by an organization
called the Institutional Review Board.
This comes from federal law.
If you get any sort of federal grant,
you must run your protocols through this.
And they're, the same basic kinds of protocols are used.
And you will be doing an exercise,
getting the approval.
So all researchers that do research
that use human subjects
have to be certified by the IRB.
You take a tutorial and you pass it,
and you get a certificate,
and that'll be a part of this class as well.
And you'll see more about that.
So their role is to guarantee
the rights and interests of the research subject,
they're there to minimize risks.
And most of what we do,
so this, here at UVM,
this same IRB oversees all the medical research too.
So there's, you know,
certainly a lot more risk at that,
of like a new experimental drug,
or a heart valve, than the kind of work that we do,
which is asking folks about their experiences,
their attitudes, awareness,
beliefs, behaviors,
things like that.
But we will have a consent process
that we use for this class.
So there are certain areas that
if you are a professional researcher,
that you may encounter,
where I guess a good way of saying it is,
you learn things you really wish that you hadn't learned,
that someone sort of inadvertently told you something
that could get them into trouble,
or that if you shared it would really adversely affect them.
And some examples here,
you know, food safety,
they're not using good standards,
they're embezzling, they're being abused.
Things like trade secrets,
animal cruelty,
maybe unsafe working conditions.
What will you do if you are there and you find that out?
What will you do?
Do you look the other way?
Do you turn them in?
What would happen if you sort of "gotcha"
your research subjects?
What would that mean to you in your career as a researcher?
I'm not saying that there's a clear line,
that there's a clear right and wrong.
These are things that you will have to deal with.
And I just wanted to raise them,
that there may be some sort of gray area here
that you may have to navigate.
The last thing is,
can social science be free of ideology?
Is there work that we can do
that doesn't have sort of an underpinning
of politics or policy?
Can we do sort of pure research in this space?
And I would argue no,
that objectivity is a direction,
that we all have our biases.
And just, I mean,
I would say also that,
the type of research that we do reflects our values.
That I do work in
sustainable community economic development,
and in food and agriculture.
And I argue, I guess,
that there's no sort of,
those always have sort of social,
political, economic implications.
Some people will agree with you, some won't.
You'll be sort of favoring some groups above others.
But think about what is the type of research
that you would feel comfortable doing, and why.
So this is the recap.
This is what we discussed.
And thank you!