Research Ethics

Comparative 'research': a modest proposal concerning the object of ethics regulation

by Rena Lederman

Towards an anthropology of disciplinarity

by Rena Lederman

IRB Advisor interview with Lederman

by Rena Lederman

Introduction: Anxious borders between work and life in a time of bureaucratic ethics regulation

by Rena Lederman

Educate Your IRB: An Experiment in Cross-Disciplinary Communication

by Rena Lederman

Doubts, Dilemmas and Decisions: Towards Ethical Research on Gender and Schooling in South Africa

by Debbie Epstein

co-authored with Professor Robert Morrell (University of Cape Town) and Professor Relebohile Moletsane (University of KwaZulu-Natal)

This article discusses the tension between ‘do no harm’ on the one hand and the integrity of the research process and... more This article discusses the tension between ‘do no harm’ on the one hand and the integrity of the research process and its intended goals on the other. We discuss a set of choices confronted in the process of researching gender and sexuality in the context of HIV in South African schools. One dilemma was what to do with information that suggested that an adjunct member of the research team was undermining the gender equality goals of the project and possibly contravening school rules, national law and the professional teacher’s code. We explore how we confronted the dilemma of balancing ethical and consent requirements with the reality of interactions and culturally embedded responsibilities and moral consideration.

Differences in national approaches to doctoral education: Implications for international research collaborations

by Marta Shaw

Co-authored with Melissa S. Anderson (1st author), Felly Chiteng Kot, Yiyun Jie, Takehito Kamata, Aliya Kuzabekova, Christine Lepkowski, Martha M. Sorenson, and Sonia M.R. Vasconcelos

In "International Research Collaborations: Much to be Gained, Many Ways to Get in Trouble." Ed. Melissa S. Anderson and Nicholas H. Steneck. New York: Routledge

Encouraged by their institutions and governments and aided by advances in technology and communication, researchers... more Encouraged by their institutions and governments and aided by advances in technology and communication, researchers increasingly pursue international collaborations with high hopes for scientific breakthroughs, intellectual stimulation, access to research equipment and populations, and the satisfaction of global engagement. International Research Collaborations considers what can and does go wrong in cross-national research collaborations, and how scientists can avoid these problems in order to create and sustain productive, mutually-enriching partnerships. This chapter outlines cross-national differences in the training of scientists that may pose challenges for collaboration.

A framework for examining codes of conduct on research integrity

by Marta Shaw

Co-authored with Melissa S. Anderson (1st author)

A practical guide to developing a code of conduct on research integrity based on an analysis of existing academic... more A practical guide to developing a code of conduct on research integrity based on an analysis of existing academic codes.

Authorship diplomacy

by Marta Shaw

Co-authored with Melissa Anderson (1st author), Felly Chiteng Kot, Christine C. Lepkowski, and Raymond G. DeVries

Problems with authorship are complicated enough in domestic research, but they can be particularly thorny in the... more Problems with authorship are complicated enough in domestic research, but they can be particularly thorny in the context of international scientific collaborations. Whether authorship disagreements are more common in international or domestic research is an open question, but some aspects of cross-national collaboration do complicate authorship decisions. This article reports on authorship problems faced by scientists involved in international research based on on a series 10 focus groups and 60 interviews with scientists in the U.S. (and a few outside the U.S.) who are involved in cross-national research collaborations.

The re-emergence of the liberal-communitarian debate in bioethics: exercising self-determination and participation in biomedical research

by Erik Christensen

The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2012.

Biomedical research has brought to the fore the issue of which rights and duties we have to each other and society.... more Biomedical research has brought to the fore the issue of which rights and duties we have to each other and society. Several scholars have advocated reframing the notion of participation, arguing that we have a moral duty to participate in research from which we all benefit. However, less attention has been paid to how we justify and defend the concept of self-determination and what the implications are in a biomedical setting. The author discusses the value and importance of self-determination on the basis of the framework of the liberal-communitarian debate. Biobank research is used as an example of a project wherein, through our participation, we confirm our sense of belonging to society and acknowledge our mutual dependence on each other. We need a richer concept of self-determination that encompasses both liberal and communitarian insights in order to make sense of the value we attach to self-determination.

Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Methodology

by Mark Bound

Qualitative Research: Phenomenological Method

by Mark Bound

Necessity of Ethical Conduct in Qualitative Research

by Mark Bound

Rethinking Anonymity in an Age of Increasing Technological Change: Cases of Pedagogical Technologists in Schools

by David Woo

Chapter abstract for the book Methodological challenges when exploring digital learning spaces in education

Anonymity is a significant ethical principle with historical and legal precedents for researchers. It is a part of an... more Anonymity is a significant ethical principle with historical and legal precedents for researchers. It is a part of an ethical trend towards protecting people’s confidentiality and privacy interests in the greater society, and recognizes ethical codes for research developed in response to 20th century research projects. Globally, confidentiality and privacy regulation is increasing in the legal sphere. Legal precedents are established by dozens of privacy commissioners or data protection authorities at national and sub-national levels. Educational institutions and private industries, among others, are obligated to maintain a degree of confidentiality to protect data subjects (e.g. research participants) and data users (e.g. researchers and readership). Furthermore, teaching and learning activities and research activities are generally not exempt from privacy ordinances. As a result, at the university level, such measures such as institutional review board (IRB) protocols and ethics lectures have been developed to promote confidentiality and privacy in research and pedagogical practice. Research literature has also discussed the significance of a principle of anonymity in qualitative research and dissemination of research (Tilley & Woodthorpe, 2011) and in accidental disclosure (Wiles et al., 2008), for example.
However, new limits and degrees of anonymity are emerging in an age of rapid technological change, where new technology enables new types of social research by transforming research participants’ and researchers’ ways of doing. While emergent and innovative use of technology, particularly Web 2.0 technology, by researchers and participants leads to emergent and innovative research projects, this also creates a problem of appropriately applying a principle of anonymity to emergent research projects. This chapter explores the problem of presenting rich, descriptive data on a unique, emergent social phenomenon while adhering to an ethical principle of anonymity. This presentation explores an appropriate degree of and limit to anonymity when reconciling the impact of social research findings with political considerations for research participants, their organizations, the researcher and other research stakeholders.
The data are drawn from five qualitative case studies of pedagogical technologists, whose primary responsibility is to support the pedagogical aspect of teaching through information technology in schools, and who have been found only in a few, unique schools. The objective of the original research project was to explore how pedagogical technologists impact schools’ ways of working with and through technology. Case data were collected over nine months. Pedagogical technologists were observed interacting with other school stakeholders, and they and other school stakeholders were interviewed. Photographs were taken. And Web 2.0 digital texts, including social networks, blogs and Twitter were analyzed. The study adopted an iterative, grounded approach to data collection and analysis. Grounding data collection and analysis entails initial data collection and analysis informing subsequent data collection and analysis in terms of development, primacy and validation of concepts.
The chapter identifies the context for the case studies and significant methodological and political considerations. Both the pedagogical technologist role and pedagogical technologist practice with technology are emergent. Pedagogical technologists use technology, particularly Web 2.0 technology, to spread technological pedagogical ideas, beliefs, values and assumptions. They also use a suite of technologies to build communities of practice. In general, these pedagogical technologists do not work in isolation and maintain high-profiles in their organizations and communities. They are hardly anonymous figures and are aware of this. Additionally, the pedagogical technologists work in few, unique schools. These schools could be readily identifiable by their employing pedagogical technologists, their curriculum, their official school-type designation and their medium of instruction, among other distinguishing characteristics. The primary researcher works in a university where the application of ethics in research is formalized and reviewed.
In view of this context, several considerations became prominent. To maintain the integrity of the findings from the case data, a richly descriptive product is needed, but to maintain anonymity, a less descriptive product is ideal. For the research findings, to name even the type of technology pedagogical technologists’ used is to give away vital information. For example, to illustrate how pedagogical technologists use Twitter to build community is to provide much traceable information even without quoting anything verbatim. Ultimately, the degree to which this social research project could be beneficial, inclusive and democratic became a political and logistical consideration. As the primary research participants were high-profile figures largely by choice, to protect their integrity and this research project, and to benefit their work would suggest disclosing more than not, and not changing key characteristics. Besides, in naming pedagogical technologists and their technologies, other pedagogical technologists and schools could identify these research participants and contact them. To make pedagogical technologists more anonymous in the research project is to belie the research project’s findings. On the other hand, the research project implicates more than the pedagogical technologist and the researcher’s needs. Pedagogical technologists work in unique environments with many organizations and people who may prefer a greater degree of anonymity. There is a shared risk to the degree of anonymity in the research project. To agree to identify the pedagogical technologist is for everyone to agree to identify the pedagogical technologist, themselves, other people and organizations. It would also be difficult to get all people, and organizations implicated in this research to agree to a shared degree of anonymity for all. Moreover, another consideration was in what ways people, their organizations and technologies could be effectively anonymized without becoming generic. In sum, this research project produced several complex considerations which required prioritizing and balancing.
The ways by which the researcher, research participants and other research stakeholders considered anonymity and established a common understanding of it to present the research findings are reported. These ways included informed consent procedures such as detailing research methods for approval by a university IRB, explaining the research and its methods to participants and obtaining their signed, informed consent. During the grounded data collection and analysis, participant checking was used. Coded data, which was anonymized to a degree by the omitting of data and employing pseudonyms, were presented to research participants for their comment. Each data collection instance was fed back to the research participants involved for their checking. Ultimately, each case report was given to relevant participants, who were compelled to read the reports. Discussions on what data to use and the appropriateness of anonymity were discussed with research participants, as well as with other research stakeholders such as this researcher’s supervisor. Disagreements on which data to use and the degree of anonymity were resolved. In these was, research ethics were broached and data anonymity were safeguarded.
The implications of researchers’ and research participants’ emergent technological practice on anonymity in social research are discussed. This chapter emphasizes the need to revisit a researcher’s methodological and ethical considerations, the political considerations for all research stakeholders, and the context for research. In the case of emergent technologies and emergent school roles in qualitative research, the chapter suggests the appropriateness of varying the degrees of anonymity for each participant, organization and technology implicated in the research. It also suggests including research participants in an iterative approach to agree upon degrees of anonymity as data collection and analysis progresses. In this way, there is a balance of the integrity of research findings with anonymity when some research participants shield themselves and others do not. This approach maximizes the inclusion of voices, social change and impact in qualitative research in the 21st century. The dissent from the prevalent discourse on anonymity should continue and be encouraged.

A few reflections on not naming Egypt's young revolutionaries

by Henri Onodera

(2011) Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 36(4): 70-73.

This short article discusses a few challenges attached to 'safeguarding anonymity’, a quality often treated as a given... more This short article discusses a few challenges attached to 'safeguarding anonymity’, a quality often treated as a given principle of ethical research, when studying public actors in the context of contentious politics. It can be transposed into local moral discourses of bravery and hinder direct responses to empirically unfounded claims in the public realm. Also, the ethics of safeguarding anonymity places conditions on practices of co-analysis and validating theoretical arguments that base on observations in limited social settings. As full anonymity and its opposite are rather undesired options, the researcher is left with the particularities of ‘selective anonymity’ that, in turn, risks reproducing the silences of specific persons and groups.

The Historical Foundations of the Research-Practice Distinction

by Yashar Saghai

Co-authored with Tom Beauchamp

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 33 (1): 45–56, 2012
DOI 10.1007/s11017-011-9207-8

The distinction between clinical research and clinical practice directs how we partition medicine and biomedical... more The distinction between clinical research and clinical practice directs how we partition medicine and biomedical science. Reasons for a sharp distinction date historically to the work of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, especially to its analysis of the “boundaries” between research and practice in the Belmont Report (1978). Belmont presents a segregation model of the research-practice distinction, according to which research and practice form conceptually exclusive sets of activities and interventions. This model is still the standard in federal regulations today. However, the Commission’s deliberations and conclusions about the boundaries are more complicated, nuanced, and instructive than has generally been appreciated. The National Commission did not conclude that practice needs no oversight comparable to the regulation of research. It debated the matter and inclined to the view that the oversight of practice needed to be upgraded, though the Commission stopped short of proposing new regulations for its oversight, largely for prudential political reasons.

Confronting the racism in research on race and utilization of mental health services

by Charmaine C. Williams

Ethical considerations in mental health research with racial and ethnic minority communities

by Charmaine C. Williams

Managing Conflicts of Interest Should Begin, First and Foremost, with Dialogue and Education, not Punitive Measures

by Bryn Williams-Jones

Mathieu, G. & Williams-Jones, B. 2012 “Managing Conflicts of Interest Should Begin, First and Foremost, with Dialogue and Education, not Punitive Measures” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 9(2): 221-222.

Por una ética del conocimiento

by Adolfo Perinat

2004. Educere, 24, 103-110.

He querido poner en exergo de mi intervención palabras de un científico a quien profeso una gran admiración: a él... more He querido poner en exergo de mi intervención palabras de un científico a quien profeso una gran admiración: a él debo ideas que han abierto horizontes nuevos a mis conocimientos: el biólogo Humberto Maturana. Sus palabras serán el leitmotiv de mi discurso. Pero antes quiero también justificar a mi manera la elección del tema. En el ocaso de una vida dedicada enteramente a cultivar el conocimiento, a transmitirlo, me veo presa de un sentimiento que tiene mucho de encanto y de incertidumbre. ¿Hacia dónde vamos los humanos en aras del conocimiento, de las múltiples especialidades científicas que hoy día cultivan los académicos universitarios, entre los cuales nos contamos? ¿Es asumible como un axioma que la búsqueda del conocimiento –que no obedece a otro principio que el de la objetividad ni a otra pretensión que la de reflejar un modelo del mundo– está más allá del bien y del mal? ¿Compete sólo la responsabilidad por las aplicaciones perversas del conocimiento a quienes las ponen en práctica? (Minas antipersona, armas atómicas o bacteriológicas, cultivos virales, drogas sintéticas, etc.). Son estos interrogantes angustiosos los que me acechan. Pero no voy a entrar a fondo en los mismos. No estoy capacitado para ello; tampoco es el objeto de un acto como el que aquí nos reúne. Están, no obstante, en el horizonte de mis consideraciones, que serán menos ambiciosas, más cercanas a nuestro vivir cotidiano, más en sintonía con nuestro trabajo de investigadores y docentes.