Informal survey on human subjects review

I am conducting an informal survey on linguists’ (particularly fieldworkers’) experiences with human subjects approval. The survey is very short and is entirely anonymous. (Note that this is not an official activity of the ethics committee.)

Click here to take survey

Results will be posted here when the survey is completed.

Links: January

Some new interesting ethical research just out. Links go to the journal site (may require subscription) and abstracts are below.

• “Go away”: Participant objections to being studied and the ethics of chatroom research (Hudson and Bruckman)
• “Guiding principles over enforceable standards” (Fluehr-Lobban)

Language Documentation and Conservation

The most recently released issue of Language Documentation and Conservation contains an interesting article by Gary Holton on the difficulties of applying “universal” ideas of ethical research practices in very different cultures. He compares research in Indonesia and Alaska and discusses some of the factors that lead to different experiences for the researcher, different expectations for the researcher’s behavior, and different views of language and linguistic data. It is a nice example for why ethics is not a ‘one size fits all’ proposition.

I disagree with Holton’s criticism about the definition of ethics as “standards which are appropriate to the community in which one works”. I agree that this is somewhat vague, but his article is a very good illustration of why it is difficult to be specific when writing guidelines which cover many different cultures. We could have an interesting discussion here about the ethics of relativity — Holton’s example where he behaved “inappropriately” in the community by not being seen to make material gains from a project in Indonesia is a nice example of how to reconcile ethics standards across countries and communities. Perhaps readers have suggestions on how one might reconcile the need to appear to make money from a project while still keeping within the guidelines of US federal funding.

Yale’s Human Research Participants site

Yale has just released a new set of pages for human research participants.

The new site recognizes the collaborative efforts required among members of the Yale community in protecting human research participants.  It is designed to provide informational materials by user category: Investigators and Research Staff, IRB Members and Staff, Research Participants, and Yale Research Affiliates. Each user category contains relevant tools and information that have been expanded and enhanced from materials on the existing IRB sites.

It’s important to note that the HRPP policies and procedures have undergone an extensive process of review and revision, resulting in the creation of many new procedures, checklists and guidance documents.  These documents reflect many of the questions frequently asked of the IRB by researchers and are designed to help users understand the critical components of conducting and reviewing human research. 

The site has quite extensive sets of links and resources for PIs, research participants and others.

Ethics Committee at the LSA

We will be having an open committee meeting at the LSA’s annual meeting in Baltimore (Jan 8-11). We are scheduled for Sunday morning, 8am, room TBD. Agenda for the meeting is still to be finalized but will include

• discussion of activities for the coming year
• official procedures for reviewing and revising the LSA’s ethics statement
• professional conflicts of interest
• provisions in the ethics statement for Indigenous students
• any other business.

Please contact Claire (claire.bowern at yale) for any questions, comments or suggestions for discussion items.

American Anthropological Association’s Blog

The American Anthropological Association’s blog has a couple of recent posts of ethical topics, including one about their Ad Hoc Commission on Anthropology’s Engagement with the Security and Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC)

Language Documentation And Description

[from the announcement by Peter Austin to the Endangered Languages mailing list; reproduced here since the volume includes several articles related to ethics topics. CB]

Language Documentation and Description Volume 7 is a special issue containing lectures on topics in language documentation and description from the 3L Summer School held at SOAS in June-July 2009. The lectures have been revised and expanded for publication, with added examples, diagrams, tutorial questions and exercises, and suggestions for further reading. Additional papers, by Peter Austin (practical advice on applying for a research grant) and David Nathan (on the role of audio, based on a paper published in the International Association of Sound Archives journal), will make the volume particularly useful to aspiring language documenters.

The lectures and papers represent state-of-the-art discussions of the theory and practice of language documentation and description by leading exponents, and the volume will be of interest to anyone teaching or learning about documenting and describing languages. The volume will be published in early 2010.

The price for LDD 7 is normally GBP 10 however until 31 January 2010 only, we are offering a special pre-order price of GBP 7.50 (plus P & P), a 25% discount. To order use the discount order form [.doc], or visit our website (www.hrelp.org/publications/papers/volume7/index.html).

Contents

Editor’s Introduction – Peter K. Austin
Current Issues in Language Documentation – Peter K. Austin
Communities and Ethics in Language Documentation – Peter K. Austin
Research Methods in Language Documentation – Friederike Luepke
Documenting Sign Languages – Adam Schembri
Language Documentation and Language Policy – Julia Sallabank
Language Documentation and Archiving – David Nathan
Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory – Peter Sells
Language Documentation and Typology – Oliver Bond
Roles and methods for audio in language documentation – David Nathan
Applying for a Language Documentation Research Grant – Peter K. Austin
List of resources

Volumes 1 to 6 of Language Documentation and Description are also available for purchase from our website. Orders for multiple copies to the same address attract a discount – contact elap -AT- soas.ac.uk for details.

Research Ethics Conferece

The University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development is organizing a conference on the Ethics and Politics of Research with Immigrant Populations. See the link for more information.