Research Ethics

If high-stakes standardized testing were to be abolished, as the report authors might like, American society as a whole would be much worse off, and so would many individual students. Probably the most unfairly affected would be the high achievers among the poor.Wealthy families who value academics have the choice of moving to a school district where their high achieving children can excel, or sending their children to a private school. It is a waste of money and otherwise too bad that they feel they must move, but they can. Poor families are not so mobile.
  High achieving students who cannot leave a school district where academic achievement is undervalued face varied pressures that impede them: pressure to fit in and be popular; to excel at sports; to work at low-pay, dead-end jobs to earn money for cars and parties; and so on. If they study hard and excel at academics, they will be taunted; disliked; called “nerd,” “geek,” “dork”; or be accused of “acting White.”
  The report spends considerable effort worrying about the feelings of students who might fail high-stakes tests, but little if any effort worrying about the social fallout of abandoning high academic standards. High-achieving students among our poor should be considered our country’s most precious human resources.
  For a variety of reasons, our society very badly needs these students to prosper; so their gifts and ambitions should be nurtured, not discouraged. The report, however, in the effect of its recommendations, would have these students treated as pariahs and have them feel guilty for wanting to work hard and succeed. After all, if these students work hard and succeed, won’t that make other students who do not want to work hard look and feel bad?
  Abandoning the enforcement of high academic standards will not eliminate pressures and hurt feelings among our youth, however. Pressure and hurt feelings are facts of life. Abandoning academics just means the pressures will come from and the hurt feelings will be caused by nonacademic aspects of these students’ lives.
  Is that really what we want? In radical egalitarian bliss, there will be no high-stakes tests, no academic standards enforced in any meaningful way, and no academic tracking. Academic progress in every school and for every student will be slowed to the preferred pace of the least motivated student.

Background
Appropriate information and consent has been one of the most intensely discussed topics within the context of biobank research. In parallel to the normative debate, many socio-empirical studies have been conducted to gather experiences, preferences and views of patients, healthy research participants and further stakeholders. However, there is scarcity of literature which connects the normative debate about justifications for different consent models with findings gained in empirical research. In this paper we discuss findings of a limited review of socio-empirical research on patients’ and healthy research participants’ experiences and views regarding consent to biobank research in light of ethical principles for appropriate information and consent.

Methods
Review question: Which empirical data are available on research participants’ perceptions and views regarding information and elicitation of consent for biobank research? Search of articles published till March 1st 2014 in Pubmed. Review of abstracts and potentially relevant full text articles by two authors independently. As categories for content analysis we defined (i) understanding or recall of information, (ii) preferences regarding information or consent, and (iii) research participants’ concerns.

Results
The search in Pubmed yielded 337 abstracts of which 10 articles were included in this study. Approaches to information and consent varied considerably across the selected studies. The majority of research participants opted for some version of limited consent when being informed about such possibility. Among the factors influencing the type of preferred consent were information about sponsoring of biobank research by pharmaceutical industry and participants’ trade-off between privacy and perceived utility. Studies investigating research participants’ understanding and recall regarding the consent procedure indicated considerable lack of both aspects. Research participants’ perceptions of benefits and harms differ across those studies.

Conclusion
The knowledge, perceptions and views of research participants who have undergone a consent procedure within the context of biobank research raise several questions on the issue of how to inform and elicit consent in an ethically acceptable way. In our empirical-ethical analysis we develop suggestions on how the practice of eliciting consent in the biobank context should be improved.

Enacted February 24, 2014 and effective until August 1, 2014, Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act targeted Ugandans of minority sexual orientations and gender identities—many of whom self-identify as 'kuchu'—by imposing life sentences for homosexual sex and same-sex marriage. The original Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in 2009 promised even worse for kuchus: it would have mandated that all Ugandans report known homosexuals and threatened execution for serial offenders and other perpetrators of “aggravated homosexuality.” In the context of Ugandan political conflict, emerging international human rights norms, and global asymmetries of power, Uganda has become an ideological battlefront where competing actors—both US-based and Ugandan—advance their respective visions of a just and righteous global society. These factors mandate that US-based activists and organizations painstakingly consider how (or whether) they can advocate responsibly and effectively for international human rights related to gender identity and sexual orientation. Through interdisciplinary lenses and critical analysis, this paper explores three questions:

• How is Uganda distinct from other sites of antigay legislation?
• How have US-based organizations impacted Ugandan discourse and policy toward kuchus?
• How can US-based rights advocates and activists campaign for kuchus without doing them further harm?

It is sometimes argued that the non-therapeutic, non-consensual alteration of children’s genitals should be discussed in two separate ethical discourses: one for girls (in which such alterations should be termed ‘female genital mutilation’ or FGM), and one for boys (in which such alterations should be termed ‘male circumcision’). In this article, I call into question the moral and empirical basis for such a distinction, and argue that all children—whether female, male, or intersex—should be free from having parts of their genitals removed unless there is a pressing medical indication.

Mentally ill patients who have been involuntarily confined under civil commitment laws are extraordinarily vulnerable to exploitation. Yet federal research guidelines are silent on whether such patients are legitimate targets for recruitment into medical research studies.  Drawing on the controversial case of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota, we argue that action should be taken to restrict the recruitment of these patients as research subjects in psychiatric research studies.

The publish or perish aphorism declares publishing a condition for survival in academe. It resonates with the imperatives of neoliberalism that privilege individual success, entrepreneurship, prestige, promotion (self- and institutional) and monetary gain. In this article, I contribute to the vast debates about this aphorism by arguing that its portrayal of publishing as exclusionary for survival of academics has ethical and social justice implications. First, it suggests that research processes are unethical because research participants are not informed of the exclusionary nature of publications. Second, the supposed contribution of research and publication for societal good is marginalised as academics try to find shortcuts to publish for their professional survival. Third, as an approach with a neoliberal feel, the publish or perish dictum elides social justice issues and undermines academic identities, and the dignity of the communities from which data are extracted are at jeopardy. I refer to multidisciplinary literature to outline the violence and exclusions that this aphorism produces. Ultimately, I propose that while publishing is an academic imperative, it can be transformational, ethical, democratic and accommodative of all those that it impacts.

The era of big data introduces new considerations into the traditional context of research ethics. Ethical questions may be considered in terms of accuracy, humane treatment, informed participants, and the necessity and applicability of the work, but big data complicates these issues. Since social media participants reflect certain demographic
features, data drawn from those sources should not be taken to represent the general
population. Big data collection may be more invasive than necessary due to easy access,
and consent may be nonexistent. Data that was once anonymous may become identifiable, last indefinitely and conflict with goals for publication. Ways to respect ethics in big data research include involving participants throughout the process, avoiding collecting information that should remain private, notifying participants of their inclusion and providing them options to correct or delete personal information, and using public
channels to disseminate research

The Nobel Prize, arguably the most prestigious acknowledgement of ethical achievement, was established by Alfred Nobel to honor those who have performed “to the greatest benefit of mankind” (Nobel, 2018). Despite the many categories for which Nobel laureates are recognized, there is no category that specifically recognizes the visual artist. In addition, many other direct and indirect measures of individual ethical achievement, such as Gallup’s annual most admired man and woman poll, rarely mention artists. This lack raises an important question: Do contributions to the visual arts fall outside the realm of ethics, thus rendering visual artists ineligible to stand as models of the ethical life?
This dissertation aims to cultivate an understanding of the visual artist as a type of ethical exemplar known as the “restored beautiful soul,” a theoretical construct proposed here for the first time in the Masi Model of the Artist as Restored Beautiful Soul (MMARBS). This construct combines the kalos kagathos ideal of the “beautiful soul,” which originated in ancient Greece as the fusion of the beautiful and the good and was revived by Enlightenment philosophers, with a restorative additional element of the communal. Using this new theoretical construct, this investigation analyzes the lives, practices, and influences of a sample of prominent late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century visual artists.
This investigation is not simply a theoretical foray into the construct of the ethical artist, however; it is also a practical contribution to the field of arts education. Currently, arts schools and art programs at institutions of higher learning offer little guidance to help aspiring young artists ground their lives and work in a comprehensive system of personal and professional ethics. To remedy this deficiency, arts educators can incorporate the case examples from this investigation into their own curricula, and, more important still, apply the restored beautiful soul construct (MMARBS) to other historical and contemporary artists. Thus, using this new construct, arts educators can develop one-of-a-kind curricula tailored to the needs of specific students, providing those students with role models to demonstrate what it means to maintain a sense of integrity with respect to one’s work, one’s viewers, and one’s community over a career spanning a lifetime.

IntroductionThe Banned Drinker Register (BDR) was reintroduced in the Northern Territory (NT) in September 2017. The BDR is a supply reduction measure and involves placing people who consume alcohol at harmful levels on a register prohibiting the purchase, possession and consumption of alcohol. The current study aims to evaluate the impacts of the reintroduction of the BDR, in the context of other major alcohol policy initiatives introduced across the NT such as Police Auxiliary Liquor Inspectors and a minimum unit price for alcohol of US$1.30 per standard drink.Methods and analysesThe Learning from Alcohol (policy) Reforms in the Northern Territory project will use a mixed-methods approach and contain four major components: epidemiological analysis of trends over time (outcomes include health, justice and social welfare data); individual-level data linkage including those on the BDR (outcomes include health and justice data); qualitative interviews with key stakeholders in the NT (...

Online interviews are deemed an effective and appropriate approach for accessing discourse about the online experiences of people with disabilities. Some of the central arguments in support of conducting discursive research online, a type of qualitative approach, are delineated. Various practical benefits are considered for researchers, as well as participants—especially those with disabilities. Ethical issues surrounding access to, and the analysis of, readily available data in online communities are brought to the fore. In light of ethical dilemmas surrounding naturalistic data collection online, an alternative approach is offered, which utilizes online interviews with people with disabilities about their online experiences. A description of the data-collection process is given, including participants and recruitment, materials and procedures, rapport building, and security and ethics. Reflections on the process highlight how methodological pitfalls were managed and, in some cases...

The current study suggests that any errors and other inaccuracies noted in the research process should be appropriately communicated to the editorial offices. This will try to eliminate the mistakes that may undermine the value of the publication. The present research thus focuses on the ethical issues and concerns in the publication. Research design, data and methodology: A content analysis applied for this study is suitable because there exists enormous textual data in the realm of ethical concerns and issues in the publication process. The current study investigated manifest and critical themes regarding ethical concerns and issues for research publication. Results: Researchers should consider ethical principles based on suggestions of this study when carrying out a publication for the work to be acceptable in diverse regions and the journal should be made in account of completeness and ensure that all the relevant factors are considered to promote the research's accuracy. Conclusions: Ethical issues denote considerations and moral elements that should be considered by the authors while making a publication. They include Beneficence, which literacy means, do no harm, respect for confidentiality, and anonymity, which is about respecting the rights and dignity of subjects identified based on personal responsibility.

Azərbaycanda sosial rifahın yüksəlməsinə xidmət edən ixrac potensiallı, müasir texnologiyalar əsasında qurulan sənaye müəssisələri üçün ixtisaslaşmış işçi qüvvəsi və bu müəssisələrin rəqabət qabiliyyətini qorumaq üçün tədqiqat və təkmilləşdirmə işlərini apara bilən yüksək ixtisaslı kadrlar lazımdır. Həmin işçi qüvvəsini yaxşı qurulmuş təhsil sistemi təmin edirsə, yüksəkixtisaslı kadrları daha çox yaradıcı təfəkkürü inkişaf etdirən elmi fəaliyyət mühiti yetişdirir. Ölkənin 2012-ci ildə qəbul edilmiş «Azərbaycan 2020: Gələcəyə baxış» İnkişaf Konsepsiyasında elmə diqqətin yerli xüsusiyyətlər və qlobal meyillər nəzərə alınmaqla prioritetləşdiriləcəyi, mütərəqqi dünya elminə səmərəli inteqrasiya prosesinin davam etdiriləcəyi, habelə ölkədə innovativ iqtisadiyyatın yaradılması məqsədi ilə elm və istehsal arasındakı əlaqələrin gücləndiriləcəyi, tətbiqi elmi araşdırmaların bazarın tələbatına müvafiq aparılması üçün zəruri mexanizmlərin yaradılacağı hədəf olaraq göstərilib [Azərbaycan Respublikası Prezidentinin Administrasiyası, 2012]. Bunlar 2016-cı ildə qəbul edilmiş Azərbaycan Elminin İnkişaf Doktrinasında da ehtiva edilmişdir [Azərbaycan Milli Elmlər Akademiyası, 2016a]. Məqalədə bu hədəflər nəzərə alınaraq ölkədə elmi fəaliyyət prosesi aparıcı ölkələrdəki vəziyyətlə müqayisəli təhlil edilmiş, onu təkmilləşdirmək və stimullaşdırmaq üçün konseptual təkliflər verilmişdir.

This article attempts to compare the state of the Research and Development (R&D) in the Republic of Azerbaijan with the practices of the leading countries in this area. Drawing from the best practices around the world, it proposes conceptual recommendations for the policymakers regarding the optimal distribution of R&D expenditures among the research areas (basic, applied, experimental); possible ways for the State to stimulate and direct diverse R&D activities in line with its strategic development goals; the issues of intellectual inbreeding, research ethics, research misconduct, predatory publishing; evaluation of researchers and assessment of research activities.

Human societies have a long history of incorporating elements of the past into the present; never more has this been the case than today. For centuries, if not millennia, creative artists and writers, architects and fashion designers, publicists and advertisers have borrowed freely from the tangible and intangible heritage of other times and places. There is plentiful evidence of how fundamentally human achievement has depended upon the transmission of knowledge across cultures....In the context of increasingly rapid and global diffusion of tradition-specific images, ideas, and material culture, it is now often a default assumption that ancient objects and images are elements of a shared legacy of humanity.  In this spirit, a growing contingent of scholars and activists aggressively defend the free flow of ideas, images, and knowledge—within and between societies, ancient and modern—on grounds that this is essential to innovation and creativity. Proponents of the Open Access and A2K movements speak of the importance of sharing the world’s vast knowledge, while scholars such as Laurence Lessig, James Boyle, and Kembow McLeod (among others) point to the stifling effects of restrictions on open exchange. Frequently the advocates of open access draw attention to benefits that flow to the source communities and cultures (or their descendants), as well as to the recipients who draw inspiration from the cultural heritage of others. Even if economic benefits don’t flow equitably, so the argument goes, the open exchange of tradition-specific objects, practices, ideas, and knowledge may play an ambassadorial role, fostering cross-cultural understanding and respect....

Truth, trust and integrity are essential to research at higher education institutions. These institutions have accordingly adopted several policies to foster research integrity. This article explores the likelihood that relevant policies at a selected institution of higher education foster research integrity. The qualitative, single exploratory case study commences with a review of scholarly literature and results in a conceptual model used for a directed content analysis of relevant institutional policies. The findings indicate that these policies do complement each other in fostering research integrity. Further research will be necessary to establish whether policies indeed contribute to responsible researcher conduct.

"There are well-established ethical standards that apply to the conduct of research in Australia, including research within Indigenous contexts. Ethics committees oversee academic or institutional research design and practice to ensure that methods are culturally appropriate and that the rights of individuals and communities are respected and protected. NHMRC guidelines specifically address the issues of Aboriginal and Torres Strait  Islander participants. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies has produced a set of research  Ethics guidelines, structured around 14 principles.
Evaluation is a form of research which provides particular ethical issues. As well as being guided by the ethical guidelines set out above, the Australasian Evaluation Society’s guidelines for ethical conduct of evaluations also provide a standard that Australian evaluators in general would adhere to.
But do these ethics processes and guidelines take into account the complete array of issues that arise with program evaluations? The authors’ experiences and observations suggest that they do not, and they are supported by much of the international literature. After detailing some of the challenges faced by the authors and by others working in the northern Australian context, four potential areas of improvement are detailed. The seminar will be of particular interest to research and evaluation practitioners, commissioners of evaluation and organisations/agencies that are subject to evaluation. "

In this paper I want to talk about the use of participatory approaches to 'teaching', drawing on my own efforts to explore research ethics with undergraduate students. I first critically address what we 'teach' regarding ethics in geography, given that 'codes of ethics' and 'good ...

This paper is concerned with the ethics of knowledge production when conducting research on racial injustice. The discussion draws upon my doctoral research, in which I interviewed 23 racialized social workers in Toronto, Canada, about their encounters with racism in the workplace. The discussion centres on my role as a racialized researcher and the effects of any assumed " insider-ness " on how I heard and interpreted participant narratives. Although the workers and I shared experiences of racism, I could not assume " sameness, " nor could I adopt an authentic voice about how racism is experienced. This paper examines the significance of producing research about racial domination, but argues for an anti-essentialist stance. I explore the ethical dilemmas involved through examining the dominant assumptions underlying insider research. Only when we come to be very clear about how race is lived, in its multiple manifestations, only when we come to appreciate its often hidden epistemic effects and its power over collective imaginations of public space, can we entertain even the remote possibility of its eventual transformations. (Alcoff, 2002, p. 267) This paper is concerned with the ethics of knowledge production when conducting research on racial injustice. I specifically examine the ethical dilemmas that arise from the assumptions that constitute insider/outsider debates in research, and I make the argument that the danger for essentialism poses significant risks to research. The discussion draws upon my doctoral research, in which I interviewed 23 racialized social workers in Toronto, Canada, about their encounters with racism in the workplace. The study focused on the ways in which racialized workers negotiate professional practice within a white-normed profession, with a specific emphasis the ways in which racial injustice manifests in everyday social work. The stories shared by participants in this study were emotionally heavy, complicated, hard to tell (and hear). The workers shared narratives describing how clients would refuse to work with them, utter racist comments toward them, and in some situations, used physical violence (Badwall, 2014). Furthermore, they relayed how co-workers and managers responded to these acts, which more often than not resulted in no action or support. Instead, their stories reveal the ways in which social work values of helping,

The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics’ (CE) philosophical status is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannot easily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to strain their conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundation as an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical foundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of ‘environmental’ ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is good for an information entity and the infosphere in general? This is the ethical question asked by IE. The answer is provided by a minimalist theory of deserts: IE argues that there is something more elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being, understood as information, and entropy, and that any information entity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim, which deserves recognition and should help to regulate the implementation of any information process involving it. IE can provide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insight and adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but also the whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethical discourse.

In 2008, researchers created human three-dimensional neural tissue – known as the pioneering work of “brain organoids.” In recent years, some researchers have transplanted human brain organoids into animal brains for applicational purposes. With these experiments have come many ethical concerns. It is thus an urgent task to clarify what is ethically permissible and impermissible in brain organoid research. This paper seeks (1) to sort out the ethical issues related to brain organoid research and application and (2) to propose future directions for additional ethical consideration and policy debates in the field. Toward (1), this paper first outlines the current state of brain organoid research, and then briefly responds to previously raised related ethical concerns. Looking next at anticipated scientific developments in brain organoid research, we will discuss (i) ethical issues related to in vitro brain organoids, (ii) ethical issues raised when brain organoids form complexes or have relationships with other entities, and (iii) ethical issues of research ethics and governance. Finally, in pursuit of (2), we propose research policies that are mindful of the ethics of brain organoid research and application and also suggest the need for an international framework for research and application of brain organoids.

The aims is to consider the political and ethical challenges involved in conducting ethnographic managerial/organisational behaviour research within the highly regulated health and social care context, in light of the emergence of more stringent "ethical approval" policies and requirements set by Local Research Ethics Committees in the United Kingdom. In the attempt and requirement to protect "vulnerable" employees, this paper aims to present an unintended paradox of consequences when participants voluntarily revealed themselves. The authors briefly review literature on research ethics and present an understanding of the ethical regulations currently existing within the British National Health Service. Within an ethnographic case study exploring the psychological contract, the authors consider the issues that arose during one stage of data collection: a qualitative questionnaire survey with 13 participants, including members of the lead author's team. Incorpo...

Polish: Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie praktyk anonimizacji danych stosowanych w jakościowych badaniach społecznych polskich socjologów oraz stworzenie typologii stosowanych rozwiązań. Aby sprawdzić, jak badacze prezentują sposoby anonimizacji danych, przeanalizowałam artykuły opublikowane w latach 2015–2019 w czterech ważnych polskich czasopismach socjologicznych. Na podstawie analizy wyróżniłam różne sposoby anonimizacji danych stosowane przez autorów artykułów, które poddane dodatkowej analizie skupień utworzyły cztery strategie anonimizowania danych: anonimizacji domyślnej podstawowej, z wiodącą rolą pseudonimizacji, anonimizacji rozszerzonej o anonimizację miejsca oraz anonimizacji rozszerzonej o charakterystykę cech na poziomie zbiorowości, a nie jednostki. Powstałe typy anonimizacji stanowią odzwierciedlenie typów występujących w literaturze przedmiotu i stanowią potwierdzenie tego, że badacze w znacznej części stosują anonimizację jako procedurę naturalną i nieodłączną część badań (zgodnie z zapisami „Kodeksu etyki socjologa” PTS). Używanie prawdziwych tożsamości uczestników badania oraz autoryzacja stanowią rzadkość. Wybierane strategie anonimizacji mają często postać prostej anonimizacji domyślnej, rzadziej stosowane są rozszerzone typy anonimizacji.
Słowa kluczowe: etyka badawcza, anonimizacja danych, poufność danych, autoryzacja danych, kodeksy etyczne

English: "The analysis of anonymisation practices in Polish qualitative sociological research in the light of the literature of the subject and ethical and legal regulations" Abstract: The aim of the article is to present the data anonymisation practices used in qualitative research by Polish sociologist and to combine those practices into types of data anonymisation. In order to realise this goal, I analysed the articles published in four major Polish sociological journals between 2015 and 2019. The analysis led to distinguishing various ways of data anonymisation which then were additionally combined into types of anonymisation by cluster analysis. Four types were identified: basic default anonymisation, leading pseudonymisation, anonymisation extended by location anonymisation, and anonymisation extended by providing the features of participants at a group level (not at an individual level). These types of anonymisation reflect the types of anonymisation that are described in the literature and confirm that researchers treat anonymisation as a natural and inherent part of social research (as stated in the “Sociologist’s code of ethics” by the Polish Sociological association). Researchers rarely use the real identities of research participants and the procedure of authorisation (clearance). The anonymisation strategies in the analysed articles are often the default ones and are rather simplified; extended anonymisation is used less often.
Keywords: research ethics, anonymisation, confidentiality, authorisation of data, codes of ethics