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lecturescript.docxSlide 1: What are ethics?
Ethics are standards of moral conduct that distinguish between what actions are right and what actions are wrong. Ethical standards for research are used to guide methodology in order to protect participants. Many ethical standards are based on general social standards, however, other protections are derived based on past research ethical errors. Researchers always have the professional obligation to protect the rights and welfare of their participants.
Ethical standards for research are often based on the Belmont Report Principles. These principles encompass respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Respect for persons dictates that researchers must treat participants as autonomous agents who have the freedom and capacity to decide what happens to them, and that researchers must always protect those with diminished capacity such as inmates, children, persons with developmental disabilities, pregnant women, or persons with fewer social/political rights. Beneficence obligates that researchers secure the well-being of the participants in their studies by maximizing the possible benefits of the study and minimizing possible risks or harms. Justice requires researchers to fairly distribute the benefits and burdens of research so that any group selected for research may also benefit from any positive results of the research.
Slide 2: Four major issues…
When considering ethics in research, there are four major issues that researchers must contemplate: potential harm, lack of informed consent, deception, and privacy invasion.
Any research participant has the right to personal safety and protection from harm. The most fundamental right of research participants is that they will not be harmed for their participation in a research project. Researchers must also consider various types of harm that may occur due to research including physical harm, mental harm, and emotional harm. These types of harm can be difficult to predict, so it is incredibly important that a researcher considers the potential impacts of their research and even discusses it with unaffiliated parties to get neutral perspectives.
Informed consent is the second ethical struggle in research and places emphasis on participant’s freedom of choice. Informed consent is defined as the ethical principle that individuals should be given enough information about a study, especially its potential risks, to make an informed decision about whether or not they wish to participate. This is related to respect for persons, as in order to consent to research, participants must be able to form rational decisions. All participants included in the study must voluntarily consent to participate in the project.
Researchers often consider using aspects of deception in their research projects in order to reduce the likelihood that a participant will change their attitudes due to their knowledge of what is being studied, otherwise known as participant bias. Deception is defined as intentionally misleading or misinforming participants in a research study and can be considered controversial as it makes informed consent difficult to obtain. However, while deception is a tool that can be used to reduce participant bias, it must be carefully considered, as some deceptions can harm participants unintentionally.
The last major ethical concern is invasion of participant’s privacy. The right to privacy that participants have includes their right to decide when, where, to whom, and to what extent their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors will be revealed. Considering that technology is making it easier for information to be widely and quickly spread, protecting privacy is becoming increasingly difficult.
Understanding all of these concerns surrounding ethics and breaches of ethical conduct is incredibly important so that when researchers are developing their studies, they can make sure that protective procedures are being utilized to their fullest extent.
Slide 3: How to address ethical concerns
Researchers are required to make substantial efforts to make sure their studies are meeting ethical obligations. When considering their research and creating failsafe’s or methods of protecting participants, researchers must evaluate potential harms, develop informed consent procedures, create ground rules for deception, and acknowledge privacy protection.
In order to evaluate potential harms, federal ethical criteria’s require researchers to consider the level of risk in their studies for research participants as well as the balance of the studies benefits to its risks. When developing studies, strategies of minimizing risk should be utilized so that the risk participants face in the study is no greater than the risk they encounter in their daily lives. In some instances however, especially when considerable scientific merit is anticipated, increased degrees of potential risk may be justified. However, even in these situations, researchers must be responsible for not allowing the degree of risk to outbalance the benefits, and researchers must provide services that will address any risk that does affect participants including medical care or counseling. To address situations where there may be some level or risk in a study, researchers should a) inform participants of any foreseeable risks, b) screen out research participants who may be harmed, and c) provide debriefing after the study is completed.
Procedures developed to ensure informed consent in research include written or verbal consent forms being provided to all participants prior to the study occurring. In the majority of cases, consent forms are required to be written and signed by participants, although in a few situations, verbal consent is appropriate. Informed consent forms are required to include a statement that the study involves research, an explanation of the purpose of the study, the expected duration of participation, a description of the procedures to be followed, a description of any potential risks or discomforts, a description of the potential benefits, a statement describing how confidentiality will be maintained, an explanation of whom to contact with any questions regarding the research or participants rights, and a statement that the participation is voluntary and that the participant may discontinue their participation at any time without any penalty. All of these procedures must be written in clear and understandable language that is appropriate to the population being studied.
While there are not federal regulations for deception in research studies, there are guidelines provided by both the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association. In situations where there is substantial risk or potentials for stress, deception is banned. Additionally, these guidelines stat the researchers must report any and all deception that occurred to the participant after the completion of the study and offer any resources to the participant that they may need in order to cope with the deception. This action of “coming clean” is known as debriefing, or a session at the end of a study in which an investigator meets with a participant to impart information about the study, including its real purpose and the nature and purpose of any deception used, as well as to provide the participant an opportunity to ask any questions or discuss concerns. This debriefing experience is not only beneficial for the well-being of the participant, but can also be beneficial to providing the researcher feedback regarding their study.
Lastly, researchers are required by federal regulation, to protect the privacy and identity of all participants in their studies. While the golden standard of research would be anonymity, or the ethical safeguard against invasion of privacy in which data cannot be identified with a particular participant, it can be an incredibly difficult standard to achieve. Self-administered surveys without names or identifying information are one example of successfully protecting participant anonymity. More often, the standard of confidentially is required and met by researchers. Confidentially means that the data obtained from participants is not shared with others without participants consent, and that participant identity will be protected with as many measures as possible such as assigning pseudonyms or number identifiers. Making sure to keep geographical indicators vague as well can further protect anonymity.
Understanding how to address all of these ethical concerns is important when developing a research project. Having openness and honestly surrounding procedures and ethical considerations allows researchers to be less vulnerable to pressures to distort the results of their projects and safeguards against ethical criticisms. Because social science research is almost always conducted and distributed with a peer-review process, this also helps ensure that publication used appropriate methodologies and can be trusted.
Slide 4: The institutional review board
The purpose of the IRB is to review research proposals to ensure that studies are conducted ethically. All research studies must be submitted to the IRB after researchers have carefully considered federal regulations and professional guidelines, assessed the costs and benefits of their research, addressed any potential ethical concerns, and then submitted the application for approval. IRB’s are committees that are present at nearly any college or university and take on both student and independent research requests. Because federal regulations require that IRB’s have committees with diverse backgrounds, there is the expectation that any areas of ethical concern will be covered and addressed.
Slide 5: Ethics and topic selection
Politics can influence research at both a personal and a structural level. At a personal level, as discussed in the past module, a researcher’s personal interests or values can influence their choice of what or whom to study. However, personal values should not influence the collection or analysis of data, or results will be biased. At a structural level, various groups in society may exert pressures that influence the course of study or what areas of research are more popular or more likely to be funded at any given point in time. Researchers and those reviewing research must also be aware that the analysis and reporting of data can have a political agenda, and thus, must be done as systematically and objectively as possible in order to reduce any bias or falsification that might occur.
Conflicts of interest can also occur during the research process. These conflicts are those in which professional goals of producing “objective” knowledge conflicts with other motives such as professional advancement, financial gain, or political interest. It is suggested that researchers always disclose their sources of funding and avoid relationships that may undermine the integrity of their work.
Researchers also have a commitment to the society and communities in which they live and work, and there is an understanding that researchers should make their knowledge available to contribute to the public good. This includes making sure that research findings are distributed in accessible ways so that they are well understood, contextualized, and responsibly utilized.
Slide 6: Social research philosophies
There are five research philosophies that, when utilized, will influence research methodologies and activities. The first philosophy is positivism. Researchers who follow the positivist philosophy believe that there is an objective reality, and that the goal of research is to understand said objective reality. Post-positivism is the philosophy that while an objective reality exists, due to the complexity of human behavior, we may not be able to fully understand it. The goal of research for post-positivists therefore is to achieve intersubjective agreement in perceptions of objective reality.
Positivist and post-positivist thoughts both support performing research that tests ideas against empirical reality without becoming invested in the outcome. They believe that research should be conducted systematically, and that documentation is utilized to reduce bias. Skepticism is maintained surrounding our current knowledge and replication is considered necessary and valuable in order to build up, refine, and support theory.
Interpretivism does not posit a single objective realty. Rather, interpretivists believe that people have different understandings of situations, and thus, research should attempt to study how people perceive reality. Constructivism builds off of the interpretivist philosophy, but extends it in order to emphasize the importance of how different stakeholders construct their own beliefs, and the beliefs of those around them.
Interpretivists and constructivists may utilize participatory action research when conducting studies, which allows them to collaborate with the people they are studying. This collaboration allows for valid definitions and conclusions to be made. Interpretivists and constructivist philosophies also believe that when performing studies, researchers should identify stakeholders and ask them about their claims and concerns thus making research interactive, use collaboration in order to share these claims and analyze both inter- and intra- group differences, and work with stakeholders to attempt to reach consensus and research that has impacts and policy implications.
Slide 7: Module 2 Wrap Up
After reading the texts and listening to the lecture prepared for this module, you should be confident in your ability to complete the learning objectives from the unit.
In particular, you should be able to criticize the historical background of research, including some of the most controversial studies included in your textbook. When analyzing these studies, consider what ethical errors were made, and how they could have been redeveloped in order to address current ethical concerns. You should also be able to successfully justify the use of research and debate the balancing of risks and benefits.
