Procedural Ethics in Social Sciences Investigation - Essay Example

?Procedural Ethics in Social Sciences Research Criminological research is full of possible ethical pitfalls, as is true of all social sciences research (Milligan et al n.d.). Areas of concern include questions about proper use of power in research, responsibilities of the researcher to the research subjects, and the usage of the information gained from such research. Procedural ethics attempts to mitigate these concerns through the use of ethical codes and standards of behaviour, and focuses on the steps that should be taken in various ethical situations (Doyal 2001). These codes have been necessary to ensure against abuses by researchers and to codify exactly what constitutes unethical behaviour (Savage n.d.). However, the use of codes and standards not enough to stop unethical research, and the issues surrounding power and responsibility still exist. Procedural ethics need to be combined with personal integrity and virtue to ensure the safety of the participants while allowing the researchers to gather information efficiently (Schienke et al. 2010:4). Therefore, procedural ethics alone does not meet these needs. This can be seen by the fundamental flaws in the design of ethical codes, the failure of such codes to adequately protect the subject and the researcher during a study, and finally in the ways that personal values and beliefs can be combined with procedural methods to arrive at the most ethical solution for a given problem. The fact that ethical codes are often written by those who do not actually participate in research studies leads to many of the fundamental problems with procedural ethics. Codes may written in vague and unscientific language, and sometimes are impractical in actual research situations, as ethics in practice may differ from ethics in theory (Roberts and Indermaur 2007). A researcher cannot always stop to consult a code or committee of ethics, and should be able to rely on his or her own moral judgment (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:73). The focus for improving ethical behaviour among researchers should therefore be on building individual moral virtue and integrity as much as or more so than attempting to perfect standards for behaviour (Devettere 2009:363). Researchers must pay close attention to the wording of their surveys or the nature of an interview, for example, in order to ensure the subject is entirely aware of their choices about participation; the procedural guidelines cannot possibly cover all informed consent situations. Poor research practices are not excused for mistakes or omissions; those practices remain unethical behaviour. (Hoye and Severinsson 2007). None of this, however, should be taken to mean that procedural ethics does not have a place in medical or social research. Prior to the existence of ethical codes, researchers often took part in studies that today seem horrifying, and there were very few consequences (McNeil 2010). Study subjects were exposed to dangerous and sometimes deadly situations, and were not always fully informed as to the true nature of the experiment (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:71). While the data gathered from such studies has been useful in medical science, it is obvious that such unethical practices could not be allowed to continue. Modern procedural ethics began with the Nuremberg Code, written as a result of the Nazi doctors war crimes tribunal. The first internationally accepted standards of behaviour for medical researchers, the Nuremberg Code is a listing of 10 points that should be met in ethical research on human subjects. (Hazelgrove n.d.) Highlights include voluntary informed consent, protection of the subject from harm, and that the risk of the experiment must be lower than the predicted gain from the study (Mitscherlich and Mielke 1949). Despite this paradigm shift in the acceptability of research, in the years following the adoption of the Nuremberg Code, unethical research continued to occur. This was due in part to the fact that the legal standing of the code was unclear and was never actually cited in the tribunal's judgment (USHMM n.d.). Even today, after the expansion of the Nuremberg Code into the Declaration of Helsinki, originally published in 1964 and updated several times since, research of questionable moral quality continues (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:71; Sudhop 2003). Ethical guidelines have an incomplete ability to address possible moral dilemmas in research. Into this gap between theory and practice fall a number of scenarios, which carry a much greater risk of possible harm to both the subject and the research. Additionally, this leaves the researcher with the stress of making a moral or ethical decision without any basis for what their answer should be. Ethical codes fail to cover the decisions being made by researchers performing field surveys or observational studies of groups that commit crimes. Both the codes and the laws say that the researcher must report such crimes or they become a criminal themselves. However, such groups are often violent and unforgiving, and reporting a crime that only the researcher could have seen puts the researcher in harm's way (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:83). Additionally, reporting the event may force the researcher to abandon their study, negating the work they have done and the possible benefits it may have carried. Such concerns arise also from prison-based studies, which carry a high risk of harm to both the researcher and the subject, and a much higher likelihood of uninformed subjects either through deliberate deception or institutional pressure. The percentage of prisoners with learning disabilities, mental disorders, or illiteracy is much than that in the general population. Without careful advance planning, it would be easy for either a researcher or a prison official to manipulate prisoners into consenting (Roberts and Indermaur 2007). Procedural ethics also fails to take into account the effects of their research on the larger community. Strict adherence to procedural ethics leaves researchers unprepared to deal with questions from society, such as what effect the research will have on policy-making, future scientific funding, and societal infrastructure. Neither are they prepared to deal with defending the ethical nature of their research, as such a researcher does not know why the rules exist but merely that they do (Schienke et al. 2010:4). An issue of constant concern in social research is the position of power a researcher may be placed in over the research subjects even while attempting to follow the relevant procedural guidelines. Those subjects who are in any type of institutional setting, be it a hospital, prison, long-term care home, or school, may feel that their participation in a study is required even if they have been informed that they may choose not to participate (Denscombe and Aubrook 1992, qtd in Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:75). A researcher must use care not to abuse this position of power. This situation is a prime example of how following ethical codes may not be enough to ensure completely morally and ethically correct research. A researcher can follow the standard of informed consent to the letter, and still cause a subject to feel that they cannot refuse to participate due to the location or nature of the study. One example of a highly controversial experiment that has had major implications for ethics in research is the 1963 Milgram studies. The subjects in the study were deceived as to the true nature of the research, but most social researchers accept that a certain level of deception is necessary in psychological research in order to obtain uncontaminated data. This is true especially with consideration to the hypothesis and cause-and-effect relationships being studied (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:76). This level of deception is generally considered to be within ethical standards and within personal moral standards of most individuals. The ethical controversy surrounding the Milgram experiments stems from the nature of the actual method, and the stress that the method used caused on the research subjects. Study subjects were encouraged by an authority figure to cause pain to another “subject” and were only informed after the experiment ended that the other subject was in no real danger of harm. Despite the post-experiment debriefing, study subjects were left with extremely high levels of guilt regarding their actions, and possibly feelings of fear and mistrust for authority figures (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:77). The Milgram experiment is a clear example of the use of power to deceive a research subject. The study participants were lied to by the researchers, and the researchers could do this because the participants had a level of trust towards them as scientists. The researchers abused this trust that was placed on them in order to gain the research data relevant to their hypothesis (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:78). This is similar to the Willowbrook School incident, in which researchers took advantage of the trust most adults and children have in educators, as well as the desperation of the parents of the special needs children to get them help. The children were given acceptance into the school in exchange for parental permission to participate in a Hepatitis study . Some were even misinformed as to the nature of the study, again abusing the level of trust in teachers, believing that the school would not lie to them or expose their children to harm (Devettere 2009:360). Ward attempted to justify this behaviour through the rationale that many of the children would be exposed to Hepatitis regardless and that they would receive better care because of the funding available for better living quarters (Krugman and Ward 1958). This justification, however, in no way excuses the deliberate infection of the children under the school's care. It left many of them as lifelong carriers of the illness, which had widespread repercussions on their ability to receive care and education later in life (Rothman and Rothman 2005:260). While most ethicists feel that Milgram's studies were unethical and there is no doubt that the Willowbrook School experiments were wrong, it is inarguable that these studies provided a useful set of observations to the psychological community, and, in the case of Milgram, that those results could not have been obtained without such deception (Biass 2002). This dilemma is common in social research. Revealing the true nature of a research hypothesis will often contaminate or even invalidate the results obtained from that participant, but ethical guidelines and personal moral beliefs insist that subjects be as fully informed as possible as to the nature of the research. Perhaps, then, it is not that Milgram should have told his subjects that the pain they were delivering was not real, but that the perceived intensity level of the study should have been lower to avoid undue stress on the participants (Burger 2007). In addition to studies where the researchers is in a position of power, there are ethical concerns in situations where the study subjects are in the position of power. This is a situation where the ethical guidelines come into play, as it is easy to justify deception of a group who themselves deceive or mistreat. This is also true of studies involving “undesirable” groups. In fact, ethicists tend to take a sympathetic view towards ethical violations during research of this type (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:78). However, ethical guidelines do not only exist for study subjects that individuals feel are worthy of them. It is clear that a combination of a prescribed ethical framework with the researcher's personal beliefs must be used to prevent unethical conduct from occurring. Ethical codes cannot and should not be taken as the end-all and be-all in the definition of ethical and responsible research. They are a starting point, providing a foundation on which the researcher must build his or her own personal ethical guidelines (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:72). They provide a “framework within which the conscientious social researcher should...be able to work comfortably” (SRA 2003, qtd in Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:73). They are not a set of instructions, but merely a road map showing multiple paths to the same final destination. If ethical codes are not sufficient, then it stands to reason that ultimate responsibility for ensuring ethical research falls on the researchers themselves. Researchers must be taught how to interpret the ethical codes properly, but must also understand that such codes often exist as guidelines (Henn, Weinstein, and Foard 2006:74). Even if a researcher is following a set of ethical standards, the potential for unethical behaviour in that researcher's project still remains. No researcher can simply blindly follow a set of directions without considering the moral and social implications of their actions on those populations that they are studying (Schienke et al 2010:2). The issues of power over the study subjects, responsibility for the well-being of the participants, and to what use unethically gathered information should be put can cause serious internal moral debate for a researcher. Procedural ethics is not sufficient to protect either researchers or subjects. This is due to three major factors: the impossibility for ethical codes to account for all field research scenarios, the ethical codes that do exist do not completely protect individuals from harm during social sciences research, and finally that only a flexible combination of both personal and procedural ethics can provide solutions to all ethical decisions in research. References Henn, M. Weinstein, M. Foard, N. (2006) A short introduction to social research: Sage publication Schienke, E. Baum, S. Tuana, N. Davis, K. Keller, K. (2010) 'Intrinsic ethics regarding integrated assessment models for climate management', Science and Engineering Ethics. Roberts, L. Indermaur, D. (2007) 'The ethics of research with prisoners', Current Issues in Criminal Justice, vol. 2007-2008, no. 309. Burger, J. (2007), 'Replicating Milgram', Observer, December. Mitscherlich, A. Mielke, F. (1949) Doctors of infamy: the story of Nazi medical crimes: Schuman USHMM n.d. 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(1958) 'Clinical and experimental studies of infectious hepatitis', American Association of Pediatrics Clinical Conference. Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, vol 1958, no 22, 1016-1022. Savage, M. n.d. The 'new' ethics of social research methods, University of Manchester Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, viewed 16 Jan 2011, Devettere, R. (2009) Practical decision making in health care ethics: Cases and concepts: Georgetown University Press Read More