Exercise 3 - Ethics in Research
Class: IS303 Created Time: November 3, 2020 4:43 PM Database: Assignment Database Last Edited Time: June 11, 2021 3:15 PM Resulting Materials: Exercise_3-Chea_Resan.pdf Status: Done
Instructions
Exercises 3- Ethics in Research
Please Read this chapter carefully: Ruane, Janet M. (2016). Chapter 3: Ethics: It’s the Right Thing To Do. In Janet M. Ruane (Ed.), Introducing Social Resesarch: Esssentials for Getting the Edge (1st ed., pp. 46-65). West Sussex, UK: Willey Blackwell, then do the following exercise.
- What ethical “red flags” might arise with the following research endeavors?
- observing people’s routines at ATM machines
- interviewing residents at an assisted living facility
- using an online bulimia discussion forum to gain insight into this eating disorder
- conducting university sponsored research to assess student satisfaction
- using Second Life as a vehicle for studying people’s willingness to use violence against others.
- Find out if your local university (or work) institution has an IRB. If so, see what you can learn about the board’s procedures: who sits on the board; what is the time frame for the review process; does the board exempt any categories of research, and so on.
How to submit:
Please write between 1 and 1.5 pages and submit in MS team by indicate sequence (in both file name and intext) of exercise and your name. Example: Exercise 3-Ly Kimlong.
Reference
National Ethics Committee for Health Research
There are many ‘ethical red flags’ to consider when conducting research studies and data collection, especially ones which involves people. In the situation of researchers observing people’s routines at ATM machines, it violates peoples privacy or sensitivity of information as their bank details are expected to be secured. Another red flag is the lack of informed consent. As an ATM is a public use machine, some might view it as free-play to encroach on people’s space of privacy, while not asking for consent.
As for researchers interviewing residents at an assisted living facility, it breaks one of the elements of Informed Consent which is The Assumption of Competence. People who lives in assisted living facilities, or more commonly known as retirement homes, are usually old, mentally unwell, or disabled. As a result, some residents might not be in a state to decide what’s good for themselves or might feel pressured to participate in the study.
If the researcher is using an online bulimia discussion forum to gain insight into the eating disorder, data collectors will be violating the Research Settings of peoples’ privacy. Online discussion forums are visited and posted on with the hope to connect and help with people handling the same problem. Even though, the internet is a public and unrestricted mass of information, it doesn’t mean it’s ethical to collect data from discussion forums about such a serious disorder as bulimia.
In the case of conducting a research project to assess student satisfaction sponsored by the university, it falls into a Conflict of Interests. As the study is specifically about the students of the project-funding university itself, that would result in a degree of conscious or unconscious biases in the findings. During the process, researchers might unconsciously favor towards and try to please their funder by interpreting data more lightly. Some researchers might also be obstructed from publishing their findings if it were to shine a bad light on the university.
Finally, in the scenario that researchers would use Second Life as a vehicle for studying people’s willingness to use violence against others, they would bump into ethical violations such as informed consent and the privacy of research settings. First of all, the Second Life app is used by many, like other virtual world experiences, as an escape from the real, responsibility filled world. Similar to video games, people who enjoy violence in them don’t mean they also enjoy harming others in real life. This type of research might not be done ethically with the informed consent from players as the virtual world, where data would be pulled directly from the developers for use. As mentioned before, players escape their realities to virtual realities, expecting anonymity, privacy, and a different identity. Researchers would be collecting data in an environment that is an inappropriate research setting.
In Cambodia, there is an Institutional Review Board called National Ethics Committee for Health Research (NECHR). The institution will take in, review, and accept research projects involving human participants, in making sure dignity, rights, and safety of subjects are not violated. The boards membership includes a chairperson, two deputy chairpersons, a secretary, and 15 members from different department, specialties, and fields. They are selected from sociologists, layers, statisticians, clinicians, microbiologists, and pharmacists. The review process is at the minimum of two weeks, where experts opinion and researchers’ clarification might be needed and add to the duration. The review board stresses that however important the research findings could be, researchers must not put the health and well being of participants at jeopardy.