Ethical Issues with Research on Lack of Parental Involvement and Childrens Education - Essay Example

Ethical Issues with Research on Lack of Parental Involvement and Children’s Education Social research is both theoretical and empirical. It is theoretical because it is concerned with developing, exploring, or testing theories or ideas that social researchers have about how the world operates, for example, the effects of parental involvement on children’s education. It is also empirical, because it is based on observations and measurements of reality, on what the researcher perceives about the world. Social research is essentially comparing theories based on observations about how the world works. However, since the subject of the research is the observed behavior of human beings, social research also requires the practice of ethical behavior. This paper looks at the ethical issues related to research work on the lack of parental involvement and its effects on the education of their children. A social research project on this topic involves a wide range of skills and activities. It requires the ability to work well with people of a wide variety, not to mention having a good understanding of the specific methods and techniques of conducting research. The researcher must understand the subject matter under study to properly craft an appropriate hypothesis and design methods to investigate it. Once the experiments are conducted and the results are out, the researcher has to publish the findings to contribute to the body of knowledge. This is one main reason why ethical issues need to be considered; for the research findings to be considered a genuine contribution to science, it has to be objectively arrived at, using methods that are objective. A researcher cannot manipulate tests to prove his/her hypothesis; neither can they publish false results. This demands the highest behavioral standards of ethics, which concerns the doing what is right and avoiding doing harm to others. Ethical considerations influence the research design because, by definition, conducting a research study scientifically may require the researcher to do things s/he does not normally do, such as controlling program implementation, asking research study participants some questions that may be inherently confidential and extraordinary. Budgets for research studies may also be limited, so researchers need to find the best tradeoff between the rigor and practicality, i.e., between the objectivity of results and the availability of funds and time. A researcher should, in addition to deciding on the feasibility of the research and the costs involved, question whether there are important ethical constraints that need consideration. However, the main reason why social research must consider ethical issues with the research topic per se and the research process is that the subjects are human persons and, more specifically on the topic of studying the effects of parental involvement or the lack thereof, children of minor age. As a complicating factor, research on this topic demands the challenge of isolating the hypothetical cause (lack of parental involvement) from another plausible cause (poor performance of the teacher in school). Each potential subject cause – parent or teacher – would have a human tendency to blame the other for the child’s poor performance. This is why in previous studies on the topic, researchers had to isolate the quality of teachers or school instruction. Feinstein and Symons (1999) argued that children achieve more when they have parents who show high levels of interest in their schooling, regardless of the quality of the teachers or instruction. On the other hand, Henderson (2007) testified that close and regular communications between teachers and families is an effective strategy to improve student achievement, assuming that classroom teaching is effective in the first place. There would be no problem with the objectivity of research results provided the assumptions, or the tests for their veracity, are clear. However, dealing with human subjects and investigating the behavior of minors, would bring about a number of ethical issues in the research study investigating the effects of lack of parental involvement on children’s education. Besides, the research study topic presents a direct challenge to some of its subjects: parents and teachers whose duty includes the proper education of children. This is one reason for valuing the American Psychological Association (APA) Code of Ethics, which provides guidelines on ethical behavior for psychology professionals who carry out research and practice. The latest version of the Code (APA, 2002) has a Preamble and a set of General Principles that provide aspirational goals guiding psychologists toward the highest ideals of psychology. Although the Preamble and General Principles are not enforceable rules, psychologists consider them in arriving at ethical courses of action. The Ethics Code is not exhaustive but is written broadly enough to apply to the activities of psychologists as part of their scientific, educational, or professional roles. In relation to the study of the effects of a lack of parental involvement in the education of children, what key ethical considerations are associated with the study? In addition to the key ethical issues related to research design discussed briefly earlier, there are those related to informed consent, confidentiality, deception and accuracy, and multiple relationships. One central problem related to the research topic is how to measure parental involvement, both in its quantity (minutes or hours per day?) or quality (what takes place during those minutes or hours the parent and child are together?). Some children need more, while others need less, and not only because some children and parents are smarter than others, but because some teachers may be better than others. Comparing data from interviews of parents with those derived from interviews of children would establish objectivity and scientific rigor. At the same time, teachers and their performance need to be taken into account, and unless the terms of research reference are clear, the information gathered would be deceptive and of doubtful integrity (APA, 2002, §8.07). This is where informed consent is important because it clarifies the research hypothesis to everyone involved: what is the study trying to prove? The study attempts to establish a causal link between two variables: (1) degree of parental involvement and (2) children’s performance (past research shows a positive correlation between the two). Offhand, the study is neither judgmental towards teachers and, more delicately, towards the quality of parenting, but the findings can be inaccurately interpreted as such. While the teacher’s full and objective participation is important, the study could hold the variable of teaching quality constant by involving only those subjects (children and parents) who belong to the classes of teachers that have been objectively judged as being of high quality (unless, like the 1999 study of Feinstein and Symons, teacher quality is deemed irrelevant). The role of parents would be more difficult to isolate because their involvement is a direct variable. When obtaining informed consent as required by the APA Code (2002, §3.10 and §8.02), “the psychologist must inform participants about (1) the purpose of the research, expected duration, and procedures; (2) their right to decline to participate and to withdraw from the research once participation has begun; (3) the foreseeable consequences of declining or withdrawing; (4) reasonably foreseeable factors that may be expected to influence their willingness to participate such as potential risks, discomfort, or adverse effects; (5) any prospective research benefits; (6) limits of confidentiality; (7) incentives for participation; and (8) whom to contact for questions about the research and research participants’ rights. They provide opportunity for the prospective participants to ask questions and receive answers”. In the case of the involvement of minors in the research, the researcher must apply §3.10 (b) of the APA Code which applies to “persons who are legally incapable of giving informed consent”, which applies to the case of the children-subjects. All these must be clearly stated in the consent letter for the subjects or legal guardians in the case of children, as in this study. The other ethical issue is that of confidentiality (APA, 2002, §4.02) arising from the relationships among the different subjects: parents, teachers, and children-students. For the research results to be objective, each party should be assured that their responses would be held in strict confidence for the obvious reason that other parties to the research study exercises undue power over the other. Teachers can decide to fail students who provide negative feedback, or the parents can punish their children, who are the most helpless of the three and need protection. The researchers must ensure the protection of privacy but at the same time inform subjects of the limits of confidentiality. There are risks involved that the researcher must realistically minimize, especially when using e-mail or keeping digital files, or when these channels are used to send or receive research data which could be compromised and affect the study’s objectivity. Lastly, ethical issues of accuracy affect the whole study, from establishing parameters for measuring parental involvement and school performance to the interpretation and publication of the research findings. How would parental involvement be measured? This would require both objective (such as attendance to school activities or parents’ meetings) and subjective (degree of attention or participation in these gatherings) measures, and direct (tutoring for so many hours each day) and indirect (cooking nutritious meals and taking them with the children) methods of involvement. To add to the complexity of the topic, can a full-time parent who can tutor his son for an hour or two a day be ethically and objectively compared to a working parent who may not have the time and whose involvement is limited to sending her child motivational mobile phone messages a few minutes each afternoon? And given that each child’s level of intelligence is unique, how would the research accurately measure their educational performance? Accuracy of interpretation is an ethical issue because biases affect research judgment and conclusions based on situational, personal, linguistic, and cultural differences with the subjects (APA, 2002, §9.06). Reference List American Psychological Association. (2002). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. (Adopted August 21, 2002). Washington, DC: Author. Feinstein, L. & Symons, J. (1999). Attainment in secondary school. Oxford Economic Papers, 51(2), p. 300-321. Henderson, A.T. (2007). Testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on NCLB Reauthorization: Effective strategies for engaging parents and communities in schools, 28 March 2007. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Read More