Pol soc 360_01_sp15_research_ethics

1. POL / SOC 360-01
Spring 2015

4.  Social scientists are concerned about ethics:
 Expansion in scope of issues investigated
 Penetration of research methods and analysis
 Many professional associations adopt ethical
codes covering their particular discipline
 What ethical guidelines do political scientists
and sociologists follow?

5. INSTRUCTIONS:
Groups need to have ONE student from each discipline.
Review the ASA and APSA Guidelines on ethical behavior.
What similarities exist between political scientists and
sociologists regarding ethics in research? Any differences?

7.  Rules, Guidelines, and Norms
 Application to Society and Individual
 Acting Unethically = Acting Unprofessionally

8. POLITICAL SCIENCE
 Responsibities in the
Classroom and to Students
 Ethics in the Publication
Process
 Ethics inTenure and
Promotion
SOCIOLOGY
 Professional Competence
 Integrity
 Professional and Scientific
Responsibility
 Respect for People’s Rights,
Dignity, and Diversity
 Social Responsibility

11. Dr. Josef Mengele Entrance to Auschwitz

14.  Commissioned in 1979 afterTuskegee Study
 Three Basic Principles:
 (1) Respect to Persons
 (2) Beneficence
 (3) Justice
 Used by Institutional Review Board (IRB)

16. Laud Humphreys Sen. Larry Craig
(R-ID)

18. Phillip
Zimbardo

20. Stanley Milgram

22.  Social scientists face conflict via two rights:
 Rights of scientist to conduct research and make
contribution to knowledge
 Rights of research participants to self-determination,
privacy, and dignity
 Researchers must weigh:
 Potential benefits or contributions of a project
 Cost to participants

24.  Essential whenever participants are exposed
to substantial risks or are asked to forfeit
personal rights
 U.S. Health and Human Services Department
 Informed consent does NOT preclude
researcher from conducting study with risk
 Participants must simply be told of risks involved

25.  Derives from cultural values and legal
considerations
 Central belief that people should be free to
determine their own behavior because
freedom is cherished value
 Asking individuals whether they wish to
participate in research project reflects
respect for right of self-determination

26.  Competence
 Voluntarism
 Full Information
 Comprehension

27.  Underlying principle of informed consent
 Implies any decision made by responsible and
mature individual who has been given the
relevant information will be the correct decision
 What’s the problem with this?
 Groups of people who are generally incapable
include those with diminished mental capacity,
young children, etc.
 What happens in these cases?

28.  Ethical guidelines ensure that participants
have the freedom whether to take part in a
given research study
 What is the Nuremburg Code?

29.  To be acceptable, consent must be voluntary
and informed
 Often impossible to obtain fully informed
consent
 Why might this be?
 Reasonably Informed Consent

30.  Confidence that participant has provided
knowing consent when research has some
level of risk associated with it

32.  (1) Sensitivity of Information
 (2) Setting in Which Observations Are Made
 Examples: Survey Research; TearoomTrade
 (3) Dissemination of Information
 Ability to match information with participants
 Privacy concerns increase with numbers

33.  Achieved by separating identity of
individuals from their given information
 Researchers can additionally maintain
anonymity by separating identifying
information from data itself
 Can also forbid duplicating records, using
passwords to control access to data,
and monitoring of file use

34.  (1) Deletion of Identifiers
 Name,Address, Social Security Number
 (2) Crude Report Categories
 County-Level Data,Year of Birth, Profession
 (3) Microaggregation
 Constructing “average people;” composites
 (4) Error Inoculation
 Deliberate errors in individual-level data