Human Subjects on Facebook

Philip Rubin of Haskins Labs has set up a Facebook group for all aspects of working with human subjects in the behavioral, cognitive, and social sciences.

NSF: Request for feedback

From the AAAS policy alert, March 4, 2009:

NSF Invites Comments on Ethics Education Requirements. The National Science Foundation has issued a request for public comment on its plans to incorporate education on the responsible and ethical conduct of research into its grant-making process. This initiative is in response to a provision in the America COMPETES Act (2007) that requires institutions to provide such training for students and postdocs. Effective October 1, 2009, NSF will require proposals to certify that the institution has a plan to provide such training and oversight. While training plans are not required to be included in proposals, they will be subject to review upon request. Comments on NSF’s plans and related matters are due by March 31. NIH has long had a similar but less far-reaching requirement in place.

Case Study: spotting potential ethical issues

A graduate student is conducting a study to find out how bilinguial English-Spanish speaking students navigate bi-cultural, bilingual identity in a rural high school setting. The study will take place in small town in Eastern Washington State that has one high school with approximately 400 students. The research methods include:  weekly interviews, and  in-depth classroom observation of four Spanish-English bilingual 14 – 17 year old students over one academic year.  The researcher will also conduct interviews with administration, teachers, parents, and other students about their thoughts on language and local identity.  What are some of ethical issues inherent in the design of this study?  What are some of the ethical issues that might unfold during the conduct of the study?

Discussion: Automatic Inclusion/Exclusion of Participants

Zachary Schrag at the InstitutionalReviewBlog has some discussion of a sentence in a recent New York Times article. Here is an excerpt from the study description:

Carl Foster, an exercise physiologist at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, was amused by ads for a popular piece of exercise equipment. Before-and-after photos showed pudgy men and women turned into athletes with ripped bodies of steel . . .
“We said: ‘Wait a minute. You can’t change yourself that much,’ ” Dr. Foster said. So he and his colleagues decided to experiment. Suppose they recruited sedentary people for a six-week exercise program. Would objective observers notice any changes in their bodies?
The plan was to photograph volunteers wearing skimpy bathing suits and then randomly assign them to one of three groups: cardiovascular exercise, weight lifting or control. Six weeks later, they would be photographed again.
Their heads would be blocked out of the photos, which would be shuffled. Then the subjects and judges would rate the body in each photo on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being spectacular.
The volunteers were men, age 18 to 40 (the university’s human-subjects review board looked askance at having women photographed and rated like that).

Schrag describes the IRB action as sexist, on the grounds that “it’s disappointing that that IRB thinks adult women incapable deciding for themselves whether to participate in a study open to men.”

This is certainly one consideration, but there are others as well. One is that the raters might have felt uncomfortable rating women’s bodies. Another is that having more than one gender in the study introduces more complex variables (although that is a study design question, and not one for the IRB). A third is that even voluntary participation in practices which are ethically shaky doesn’t make the practice less shaky (for example, voluntary recruitment to study the psychological effects of discrimination doesn’t lessen the IRB’s worries about subjecting participants to potential psychological harm).

What do you think?

Suggestions

Please add any suggestions for discussion topics, case studies, or other queries as comments to this page.

1. Introduction.

Linguists work in a variety of settings and approach the study of language from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Each research setting presents a specific set of potential ethical dilemmas. It is the responsibility of linguists individually and collectively to anticipate ethical dilemmas and to avoid harm to those with whom they work.

The Linguistic Society of America does not adjudicate claims of unethical behavior. This statement is meant to provide linguists with a framework for making ethical choices and to foster broader discussion of ethics in the discipline.

2. Responsibility to those we study.

Linguists have a responsibility to protect and respect their research participants:

• The aims of an investigation should be communicated as clearly as possible to language consultants.
• Linguists should determine in advance whether a speaker wishes to remain anonymous or to receive recognition and should comply with those wishes.
• Linguists should obtain informed consent in advance from those providing data, whether orally or in writing.
• Linguists should be careful not to coerce anyone to participate in their research and should respect the wishes of research participants to withdraw from a study at any time.
• Linguists should consider possible repercussions of a study and should discuss these fully with participants and groups likely to be affected.
• Fair compensation should be given for any assistance.

Appropriate frameworks for interaction with outside researchers vary depending on a community’s particular culture and history. Some communities regard language, oral literature, and other forms of cultural knowledge as valuable intellectual property that should be respected by outsiders. Other communities are eager to share such knowledge in the context of a long-term relationship of reciprocity and exchange. In general linguists should strive to determine what will be constructive for all involved in a research encounter, given the community’s cultural values.

In many communities responsibility for linguistic and cultural knowledge is viewed as corporate, so that individual community members are not in a position to consent to share materials with outsiders. In such cases, the researcher is responsible to the community as well as to individual speakers:

The aims of an investigation should be communicated as clearly as possible to the community. Ideally, the community will be involved at an early stage in planning projects and in selecting speakers.

Linguists should determine in advance what types of information may be considered private and should comply with community wishes regarding access, archiving, and distribution of results.

Because language is shared knowledge, it may be appropriate to compensate the community for assistance by making direct payment, helping to facilitate ongoing training, seeking financial support for community efforts in language development, or other means.

3. Responsibility to students.

Linguists should minimize harm to students and should model and promote ethical behavior.

Linguists should acknowledge the help of students in research and should compensate students fairly for their assistance.

Sex, marital status, race, ethnic background, social class, political beliefs, disability, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, age, and other such distinctions are irrelevant to academic and scholarly achievement. Linguists and programs should not discriminate based on them.

Sexual liaisons between instructors and students may lead to exploitation and conflicts of interest. Instructors and students should avoid such involvement when an instructor is in any way responsible for a student’s success.

Linguists should ensure that their students receive instruction in the ethical practices appropriate for their field.