3 Ethics in Research

Webster’s dictionary defines ethics as “a set of moral principles” (https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/ethic) that help us distinguish between right and wrong. In social science research, professional codes of conduct and university committees, called Institutional Review Boards, define and enforce ethical standards for conducting research. Even if not explicitly specified, scientists must still abide by standards shared by the scientific community on what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviors in the professional conduct of scientific research.

Ethical standards in research arose in part as a response to researchers and organizations that manipulated people and data to advance private agendas, and in the process, harmed people involved in research and disregarded their basic human rights. One major reason this could happen is that unethical behaviors may not be illegal. If a researcher’s conduct falls within a gray zone between ethics and law, she may not be culpable in the eyes of the law, but may still have harmed someone. She may face severe damage to her professional reputation, and even lose her job on grounds of professional misconduct. Ethical norms may vary from one society to another. This book focuses on ethical standards when applied to scientific research in Western countries.

Human Versus Nonhuman Subjects

Ethical concerns associated with research conducted on human beings vary dramatically from those of research conducted on non-living entities. The US Department of Health and Human Services has an Office of Human Research Protections, which provides guidance on and regulates research conducted with human subjects. As published by that office, Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), part 46, “Protection of Human Subjects” (also called the 2018 Common Rule) defines a human subject as “a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research obtains information or biospecimens through intervention or interaction with the individual, and uses, studies, or analyzes the information or biospecimens; or obtains, uses, studies, analyzes, or generates identifiable private information or identifiable biospecimens.” (45 CFR 46). In some states, human subjects also include deceased individuals and human fetal materials.

By contrast, nonhuman research subjects are objects or entities that investigators manipulate or analyze in the process of conducting research. In criminal justice research, nonhuman subjects typically include sources such as newspapers, historical documents, legislation, television shows, buildings, and materials from popular culture such as videos or music. While fewer regulations tend to apply to research on nonhuman subjects, there are still ethical considerations that all researchers must consider regardless of their research subjects. We’ll discuss those considerations, and concerns unique to research on human subjects.

A Historical Look at Research on Humans

Research on humans hasn’t always been regulated as it is today. Medical vaccination trials provide the earliest documented cases of research using human subjects (Rothman, 1987). For example, in the late 1700s, scientist Edward Jenner exposed an 8-year-old boy to smallpox to identify a vaccine for the devastating disease. Medical research on human subjects continued without much law or policy intervention until the mid-1900s when at the end of World War II Nazi doctors and scientists were put on trial for conducting experiments, in which they tortured and murdered many people who had been forced into concentration camps. Surprisingly, at the very time that the Nazis conducted their horrendous experiments, Germany did have written regulations specifying that human subjects must clearly and willingly consent to their participation in medical research (Faden & Beauchamp, 1986). Nazi experimenters completely disregarded these regulations; however, the fact that they existed suggests that efforts to regulate the ethical conduct of research are necessary but certainly not sufficient for ensuring the protection of human rights. The trials, conducted in Nuremberg, Germany, resulted in the creation of the Nuremberg Code, a 10–point set of research principles designed to guide doctors and scientists who conduct research on and with human subjects. Today, the Nuremberg Code guides medical and other research conducted on human subjects, including social scientific research.

Social scientists have also conducted unethical research on humans. In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram (1974) conducted a series of experiments designed to understand obedience to authority. During the experiments, he tricked people into believing they were administering an electric shock to other research subjects. The shocks weren’t real, but some of Milgram’s research participants experienced extreme emotional distress after the experiment (Ogden, 2008). For some people, the realization that they were willing to administer painful shocks to another human being just because someone who looks authoritative has told them to do so might indeed be traumatizing, even if you later learn that the shocks weren’t real.

Around the same time that Milgram conducted his experiments, psychologist Philip Zimbardo created the Stanford Prison Experiment. He and his research team recruited Stanford students to participate in a study about the psychology of imprisonment (Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo, 1973). They randomly assigned students to be prisoners or guards and put them into a mock prison that they had designed, located in the basement of one of the buildings on campus. The students lived there twenty-four hours per day for the duration of the experiment, which was supposed to be two weeks, but lasted only six days. Not long after the experiment began, the guards started to inflict psychological abuse and torture upon the prisoners, causing them to suffer. Zimbardo acted as the prison’s superintendent, keeping close watch on what happened in the prison. Zimbardo let the experiment (and the suffering) continue until one of his former graduate students confronted him about his participation in the experiment, and his decision to let it continue (https://www.prisonexp.org/faq). Zimbardo ended the experiment the next day. Despite raising serious ethical concerns, the experiment’s findings became one of the most famous studies of obedience to authority in social psychology and criminology research. Later research would indicate many flaws (ethical and procedural) in the study that call into question the experiment’s main findings (Le Texier, 2019).

Surprisingly, the Stanford Prison Experiment had been approved by the university’s institutional review board (IRB), a committee responsible for reviewing and approving research projects to ensure that human rights are protected during research involving human subjects. The fact that the IRB had approved the prison experiment demonstrates, once again, that having rules and regulations in place with a body designated to enforce them doesn’t necessarily prevent abuses from happening. The next section explains the rise and purposes of IRBs for ensuring the ethical conduct of research.

Institutional Review Boards

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, conducted in Alabama from the 1930s to the 1970s, led to the establishment of institutional review boards across the US. The experiment sought to understand the natural progression of syphilis in human beings. Investigators working for the Public Health Service enrolled hundreds of poor African American men in the study, some of whom had been diagnosed with syphilis and others who had not. Even after effective syphilis treatment was identified in the 1940s, researchers denied treatment to research participants so that the researchers could continue to observe the progression of the disease. In 1972 the public learned of the experiment, and the study ended. In 1997, President Clinton publicly apologized on behalf of the American people for the study.

The Tuskegee experiment increased public awareness of and concern about research on human subjects. In 1974 the US Congress enacted the National Research Act,  which created the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research. In 1979, the commission produced The Belmont Report, a document outlining basic ethical principles for research on human subjects (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979).

The Research Act also required that all institutions receiving federal support establish institutional review boards (IRBs) to protect the rights of human research subjects (Pub. L. no. 93-348 Stat 88. (1974)). Since then, many organizations where research is conducted but do not receive federal support have established review boards to evaluate the ethics of the research they conduct.

IRBs are tasked with ensuring that the rights and welfare of human research subjects will be protected at all institutions, including universities, hospitals, nonprofit research institutions, and other organizations that receive federal research support. IRBs typically consist of members from various academic disciplines and representatives from the community in which they reside. For example, representatives from nearby prisons, hospitals, or treatment centers might sit on the IRBs of university campuses near them. The diversity of membership helps to ensure that the many complex ethical issues that may arise from research with human subjects will be considered fully, by a knowledgeable and experienced panel of people.

The IRB approval process requires completing a structured application providing complete information about the research project, the researchers (principal investigators), and details on how the subjects’ rights will be protected. Proposals often require additional documentation such as a consent form, research questionnaire, interview protocols, and any other documents that will be used or distributed to participants in the project. Researchers must also demonstrate familiarity with the ethical principles of research by providing documentation that they have completed a research ethics course. Researchers can only begin recruiting participants and collecting data after the IRB review committee has approved the project. These procedures apply to students conducting research with human subjects, although some universities make exceptions for projects that will not be shared outside of the classroom.

You may be surprised to learn that social science researchers don’t always appreciate IRBs. Of course, most researchers want to conduct ethical research, but some IRBs are most well-versed in reviewing biomedical and experimental research, so they may not fully grasp other types of research designs such as qualitative and open-ended research designs. The members of IRBs often want to know in advance exactly who will be observed, where, when, and for how long, whether and how they will be approached, exactly what questions they will be asked, and what predictions the researcher has for her or his findings. For some projects, providing this level of detail is impossible even with a solid research design. For example, a researcher who wanted to engage in participant observation in a group of 200-plus members for a year or two may be unable to answer all of the questions that IRB members might want to know.

While IRBs do not intend to stop researchers from studying controversial topics or make them avoid using certain methodologically sound data collection techniques, it sometimes happens. Review boards serve a necessary and important function, so researchers must continue to educate IRB members about the wide variety of valid and reliable scientific research methods and topics important to social scientific studies.

Ethical Issues in Scientific Research

As we have discussed, conducting research on humans presents many ethical considerations that researchers must account for before beginning their research projects. This section discusses some ethical issues that scientists must consider before conducting research with human beings.

Informed Consent

Researchers cannot force anyone to participate in a research project without that person’s knowledge or consent. Human subjects in a research project must be aware that their participation in the study is voluntary, that they have the freedom to withdraw at any time without any unfavorable consequences, and that they will not be harmed because of their participation or non-participation in the project. For example, if an instructor asks her students to fill out a questionnaire as part of a research study, she must inform them that their participation is voluntary, and she must not provide bonus points for participation in the study. Providing extra credit for participants but not for non-participants would be unethical because it would place them at a distinct disadvantage. To avoid this issue, the instructor could give everyone extra credit regardless of participation or provide an alternate task for non-participants to earn extra credit without participating in the research study.

To ensure that researchers follow the ethical standard of voluntary participation, they must design procedures to obtain subjects’ informed consent to participate in their research. Informed consent is a human subject’s voluntary agreement to participate in research based on a full understanding of the research and of the possible risks and benefits of participating in the study. Before the start of the study, all participants must receive and sign a form that clearly describes their rights to not participate and to withdraw at any time. Although obtaining informed consent sounds simple, ensuring that a participant has given informed consent is much more complicated than you might presume.

First, in giving informed consent, subjects may neither waive nor even appear to waive any of their legal rights. The 2018 Common Rule discussed earlier in this chapter also specifies that research subjects cannot release a researcher or the researcher’s sponsor or institution from legal liability should something go wrong during their participation in the research (45 CFR 46). You can read the full list of requirements for informed consent in section 46.116 of the 2018 Common Rule on the Department of Health and Human Services’s website. For now, we’ll focus on the legal issues related to informed consent.

Most social science research does not involve asking subjects to place themselves at risk of physical harm by taking untested drugs or consenting to new medical procedures. Social scientists have to assess the potential for other types of risks such as social and economic harms that may result from participation in the research. For example, imagine if a researcher fails to sufficiently conceal the identity of a police officer, who in an interview explains that she believes her chief’s administrative style is damaging the department. If this information became public knowledge, her employment, professional reputation, and working environment may be jeopardized. If this happened, then the researcher might face legal action. While this example might seem extreme, it illustrates how even social scientists conducting research can cause real legal ramifications.

Beyond the legal issues, most institutional review boards (IRBs) require researchers to share some details about the purpose of the research, possible benefits of participation, and most importantly, possible risks associated with participating in that research with their subjects. In addition, researchers must describe how they will protect subjects’ identities, how and for how long any data collected will be stored, and whom to contact for additional information about the study or subjects’ rights. This information is typically shared in an informed consent form that researchers provide to subjects. Appendix A provides an example of an informed consent form used in a research project about African Americans’ healthcare experiences and outcomes. The form includes the information required to ensure that participants are fully informed about the study before agreeing to participate.

While researchers should provide information about their study to potential subjects before data collection, disclosing such information may influence subjects’ responses. For instance, if the purpose of a study is to examine to what extent subjects will abandon their views to conform to “groupthink”, and they participate in an experiment where they listen to others’ opinions on a topic before voicing their own, then disclosing the study’s purpose before the experiment will likely sensitize subjects to the treatment. Under such circumstances, members of the IRB will determine whether researchers have disclosed enough information, and if the potential benefits of the study outweigh the risks of keeping the information or any other secrets from participants. Even if a study’s purpose cannot be revealed before data collection begins, researchers should reveal the purpose, potential risks, or harms the participant might have experienced during the study, in a debriefing session immediately following the data collection process.

In some cases, subjects are asked to sign the consent form (or, in an online study, to check a box) indicating that they have read it and fully understand its contents. In other cases, subjects are provided a copy of the consent form, and researchers are responsible for ensuring subjects have read and understand the form before proceeding with any data collection. In either case, the researchers must confirm participants in the study understand the procedures, possible risks, benefits, legal issues, and other information related to the study, before participation.

One last point that researchers must consider when preparing to obtain informed consent is that not all potential research subjects are equally competent or legally allowed to consent to participate in research. These people are sometimes referred to as members of vulnerable populations, or people at risk of experiencing undue influence or coercion. Some examples of vulnerable populations include children, people in prison, and people with impaired decision-making capacities. The US Department of Health and Human Services provides guidelines on research with vulnerable populations.

In terms of informed consent, vulnerable populations require more stringent rules to ensure voluntary and informed participation in research. In research with children, parents or guardians often sign the informed consent form, while the children themselves may sign age-appropriate consent forms designed specifically for them. People in prison or otherwise under supervision within the criminal justice system also qualify as vulnerable populations. Concern about the vulnerability of these subjects comes from the possibility that they could believe they will receive some highly desired reward, such as early release if they participate in research. Another issue comes from the potential exploitation of people in prison or under supervision for research purposes with no real benefits to study participants (recall the experiments that Nazi doctors performed on people in concentration camps).

Regardless of what specific factors lead a potential participant to be categorized as part of a vulnerable population, researchers must try not to exclude members of vulnerable populations from participation in research simply because they are vulnerable, or because obtaining their consent may be more complex. Although the procedures for informed consent and approval of research projects may be more rigorous when the research involves vulnerable populations, people in these groups must be represented in the body of knowledge produced by social scientists.

Protection of Identities

The informed consent process requires researchers to explain how they will protect participants’ identities throughout the research project. In protecting subjects’ identities, researchers typically promise to maintain either the anonymity or confidentiality of their research subjects. Anonymity is the more stringent of the two; when a researcher promises anonymity to participants, not even the researcher can link participants’ data to their identifying information. For example, a survey sent by mail without identification numbers to track who responds to the survey would be categorized as an anonymous survey. Anonymity may be particularly important in studies of deviant or undesirable behaviors, such as drug use or illegally downloading music. Subjects in these studies may not give truthful responses unless the researcher can ensure anonymity. In these cases, anonymity also ensures that authorities such as law enforcement can neither identify nor track subjects in the future.

Anonymity may be impossible to guarantee because several of the modes of data collection that social scientists employ, such as participant observation and face-to-face interviewing, require that researchers know the identities of their research participants. In these cases, a researcher should at least be able to promise confidentiality. Confidentiality means that a researcher may keep some identifying information on participants, but only the researcher can link participants with their data, and promise not to do so publicly. Confidentiality is a less stringent protection of identity because responses and identifying information may still be used in court. For example, two years after the Exxon Valdez supertanker spilled ten million barrels of crude oil near the port of Valdez in Alaska, the communities suffering economic and environmental damage commissioned a San Diego research firm to survey the affected households about increased psychological problems in their families. Because the cultural norms of many indigenous peoples made such public revelations particularly painful and difficult, researchers assured participants confidentiality of their responses. When this evidence arose in court, Exxon petitioned the court to subpoena the original survey questionnaires (with identifying information) to cross-examine respondents regarding the answers they had given under the protection of confidentiality. The court granted Exxon’s request. The case was settled before victims were forced to testify in open court, but the potential for similar issues regarding confidentiality in social science research remains a concern.

The example consent form in Appendix A includes a section explaining the efforts the researchers will take to try to maintain confidentiality. The section includes a disclaimer that the researchers may have to disclose participants’ personal information if required by law.

Protecting research participants’ identities is not always easy, especially for those researching stigmatized groups or illegal behaviors. Sociologist Scott DeMuth learned that when conducting his dissertation research on a group of animal rights activists. As a participant observer, DeMuth knew the identities of his research subjects. When some of his research subjects vandalized facilities and removed animals from several research labs at the University of Iowa, a grand jury called on DeMuth to reveal the participant’s identities. When DeMuth refused to do so, he was jailed briefly and then charged with conspiracy to commit animal enterprise terrorism and cause damage to the animal enterprise (Jaschik, 2009).

Professional Codes of Ethics

Most professional associations of researchers publish formal codes of conduct describing acceptable and unacceptable professional behaviors of their members. For criminal justice researchers, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) publishes a Code of Ethics that includes general principles of ethics for association members, and a list of 22 ethical standards for members of the association as researchers. The standards are grouped into two categories, including 1) objectivity and integrity in the conduct of criminal justice research, and 2) disclosure and respect of the rights of research populations by the academy members. The first group of standards includes adhering to research standards, acknowledging research limitations, accurately reporting all findings and sources of financial support and sponsorship of the research, honoring commitments, creating collaborative agreements about the division of labor in a research project, and disseminating research findings. The second group of standards includes not misusing professional positions for fraud, ensuring informed consent, ensuring confidentiality where possible, ensuring minimal risk of harm to human subjects, anticipating potential threats to confidentiality and trying to address them, adhering to promises of confidentiality, and meeting federal and institutional requirements for research with human subjects. You can read the full ACJS Code of Ethics at https://www.acjs.org/page/Code_Of_Ethics.

Other professional organizations such as the American Society of Criminology publish codes of ethics for their members. Regardless of the disciplines or associations with which a researcher is affiliated, she must adhere to the ethical standards of those organizations.

An Ethical Controversy

Robert Allen “Laud” Humphreys, an American sociologist and author, is best known for his Ph.D. dissertation, Tearoom Trade, published in 1970. For his dissertation, he collected data on the tearoom trade: the practice of men engaging in anonymous sexual encounters in public restrooms. Humphreys wished to understand who these men were and why they participated in the trade. To conduct his research, Humphreys offered to serve as the person who keeps an eye out for police (and gets the benefit of being able to watch the sexual encounters), in a local park restroom where the tearoom trade was known to occur. Humphreys did not identify himself as a researcher to his research subjects. Instead, he watched his subjects for several months, getting to know them, learning more about the tearoom trade practice, and without the knowledge of his research subjects, jotting down their license plate numbers as they pulled into or out of the parking lot near the restroom. With the help of several insiders who had access to vehicle registration information, Humphreys later used those license plate numbers to obtain the names and home addresses of his research subjects. Then, disguised as a public health researcher, Humphreys visited his subjects in their homes and interviewed them about their lives and health. Humphreys’ research dispelled many myths and stereotypes about the tearoom trade and its participants. For example, he learned that over half of his subjects were married to women and many of them did not identify as gay or bisexual. Humphreys’ research is still relevant today. In fact, as the 2007 arrest of Idaho Senator Larry Craig in a public restroom at the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport attests, undercover police operations targeting tearoom activities still occur more than 40 years after Humphreys conducted his research. Humphreys’ research is also frequently cited by attorneys who represent clients arrested for lewd behavior in public restrooms.

Humphreys’ work sparked major controversy at his home university (for example, the chancellor tried to revoke his degree), and among sociologists and members of the public, as it raised concerns about the purpose and conduct of sociological research. In the original version of his report, Humphreys defended the ethics of his actions. In 2008, years after Humphreys’ death, his book was reprinted with the addition of a retrospect on the ethical implications of his work. In written reflections on his research and its fallout, Humphreys maintained that his tearoom observations constituted ethical research because those interactions occurred in public places. But, Humphreys added that he would conduct the second part of his research differently. Rather than trace license numbers and interview unwitting tearoom participants in their homes under the guise of public health research, Humphreys instead would spend more time in the field and work to cultivate a pool of informants. Those informants would also know that he was a researcher, and would be able to fully consent to being interviewed. In the end, Humphreys concluded that “there is no reason to believe that any research subjects have suffered because of my efforts, or that the resultant demystification of impersonal sex has harmed society” (Humphreys 2008, p. 231).

Did Humphreys conduct ethical research? This question has no clear answer. Some argue that Humphreys’ research was deceptive, put his subjects at risk of losing their families and their positions in society, and was therefore unethical (Warwick, 1973; Warwick, 1982). From this perspective, he should not have invaded others’ right to privacy and/or deceived his participants in the name of science. Even some who considered observing tearoom activityacceptable, because the participants used public facilities, thought that the follow-up interview in participants’ homes was unethical because he obtained their home addresses and did not seek informed consent.

Others suggest that the benefits of Humphreys’ research, namely the dissolution of myths about the tearoom trade and human sexual practice, outweighed the potential risks associated with the work (Lenza, 2004). From this perspective, the tearoom trade is an important sociological phenomenon worth investigating; there was no other way to collect the data, and the deceit was harmless because Humphreys did not disclose his subjects’ identities to anyone. Today, a sociologist would probably not be allowed to conduct a project similar to Humphreys’, but the controversy is still hotly debated in discussions of research ethics.

Summary

• Ethics are moral principles that help us differentiate between right and wrong. They are important to social scientific research because they help ensure that scientists protect the rights of human subjects.
• Historically, research studies involving human subjects have violated ethical principles by forcing people to participate in medical experiments and causing harmful and undue emotional distress.
• Institutional review boards (IRBs) emerged in 1974 after the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. IRBs review and approve research projects to ensure that research will protect human rights.
• Informed consent is a person’s voluntary agreement to participate in research, based on a full understanding of the research and the possible risks and benefits of participating in the study. Researchers must ensure that participants have provided their informed consent before beginning to collect data.
• Vulnerable populations such as children, people in prison, and people with impaired decision-making capabilities require more stringent protections for ensuring informed consent and voluntary participation.
• Anonymity means that a researcher cannot link participants’ data to their identifying information. Confidentiality means that a researcher can link participants’ data to their identifying information, but they promise not to do so publicly.
• Professional organizations publish codes of ethics for their members. While each organization has its own code of ethics, it generally relates to integrity in the research process and expectations for protecting human rights during the research process.

Discussion Questions

1. Visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website on the Nuremberg Code. List each of the ten basic principles of research on human subjects. How does each principle help protect human rights during research?
2. Browse the Stanford Prison Experiment website to learn more about this infamous experiment. Based on what you find, and what you’ve learned in this chapter, was the Stanford Prison Experiment ethical? Why or why not?
3. How did institutional review boards arise? Are they necessary for the conduct of ethical research? Why or why not?
4. Sociologist Scott DeMuth’s case raises issues about protecting identities in research with human subjects. What do you think? Should DeMuth have revealed the identities of his research subjects? Why or why not?
5. Did Humphreys conduct ethical research? Use information on informed consent, protection of identities, and professional codes of conduct to explain why or why not.

Works Cited in Chapter 3

Faden, R. R., & Beauchamp, T. L. (1986). A history and theory of informed consent. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Haney, C., Banks, C., and Zimbardo, P. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1, 69-79.

Humphreys, L. (1970). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places. London, UK: Duckworth.

Humphreys, L. (2008). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places, enlarged edition with a retrospect on ethical issues. New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction.

Jaschik, S. (2009, December 4). Protecting his sources. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/12/04/protectinghis-sources

Le Texier, T. (2019). Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist, 74(7), 823–839.

Lenza, M. (2004). Controversies surrounding Laud Humphreys’ tearoom trade: An unsettling example of politics and power in methodological critiques. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 24, 20–31.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (1979). The Belmont report: Ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research. Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-thebelmont-report/index.html

Ogden, R. (2008). Harm. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 379–380). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Rothman, D. J. (1987). Ethics and human experimentation. The New England Journal of Medicine, 317, 1195–1199.

Warwick, D. P. (1973). Tearoom trade: Means and ends in social research. Hastings Center Studies, 1, 39–49.

Warwick, D. P. (1982). Types of harm in social research. In T. L. Beauchamp, R. R. Faden, R. J. Wallace Jr., & L. Walters (Eds.), Ethical issues in social science research. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.