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Ethics, Legal Constraints, and Human Relations In Educational Research

Overview

In planning and carrying out an educational research project, one must never lose sight of the special requirements and problems involved in working with people. The "human relations" aspect of educational research is particularly important when the research project is carried out in the public schools. When using schoolchildren as subjects, it is necessary to obtain the understanding and cooperation of school administrators, teachers, parents, interested community groups, and the subjects themselves. Thus, the procedures section of the student's research plan should describe how he intends to gain school cooperation, how he will deal with potential human relations problems that may arise, and what precautions he will take to ensure that the plan meets the ethical standards and legal requirements that have been established for behavioral science research.

Objectives

  • Identify aspects of a research situation that involve ethical questions or principles.
  • Describe the legal constraints to educational research imposed by federal law.
  • Discuss the kinds of questions the researcher must answer when presenting a research plan to school officials.
  • Slate steps that can be taken to protect the rights of individuals who are to serve as subjects in a research project.
  • Define dehoaxing and desensitizing, identify research situations where these are required, and describe what steps should be taken to dehoax or desensitize research subjects.

Ethical Principles

In recent years the ethical aspects of behavioral research have been of increasing concern to the Congress, scientists, private citizens, and institutions that support this type of research. In part this concern reflects the great growth of behavioral research and its impact on people's lives. Moreover, although most researchers have acied in an ethical manner, there have been some abuses of individuals' rights.
The American Psychological Association has recently published a set of ten ethical principles for the pursuit of research activities. In planning a research project, the student should study these carefully:
  • In planning a study the investigator has the responsibility to make a careful evaluation of its ethical acceptability, taking into account the following additional principles for research with human beings. To the extent that this appraisal, weighing scientific and humane values, suggests a compromise of any principle, the investigator incurs an increasingly serious obligation to seek ethical advice and to observe stringent safeguards to protect the rights of the human research participants.
  • Responsibility for the establishment and maintenance of acceptable ethical practice in research always remains with the individual investigator. The investigator is also responsible for the ethical treatment of research participants by collaborators, assistants, students, and employees, all of whom, however, incur parallel obligations.
  • Ethical practice requires the investigator to inform the participant of all features of the research that might reasonably be expected to influence willingness to participate, and to explain all other aspects of the research about which the participant inquires. Failure to make full disclosure imposes additional force to the investigator's abiding responsibility to protect the welfare and dignity of the research participant.
  • Openness and honesty are essential characteristics of the relationship between investigator and research participant. When the methodological requirements of a study necessitate concealment or deception, the investigator is required to insure as soon as possible the participant's understanding of the reasons for this action and of a sufficient justification for the procedures employed.
  • Ethical practice requires the investigator to respect the individual's freedom to decline to participate in or withdraw from research. The obligation to protect this freedom requires special vigilance when the investigator is in a position of power over the participant, as, for example, when the participant is a student, client, employee, or otherwise is in a dual relationship with the investigator.
  • Ethically acceptable research begins with the establishment of a dear and fair agreement between the investigator and the research participant that clarifies the responsibilities of each. The investigator has the obligation to honor all promises and commitments included in that agreement.
  • The ethical investigator protects participants from physical and mental discomfort, harm, and danger. If a risk of such consequences exists, the investigator is required to inform the participant of that fact, secure consent before proceeding, and take all possible measures to minimize distress. A research procedure must not be used if it is likely to cause serious or lasting harm to a participant.
  • After the data are collected, the investigator provides the participant with information about the nature of the study and to remove any misconceptions that may have arisen. Where scientific or human values justify delaying or withholding information, the investigator acquires a special responsibility to assure that there are no damaging consequences for the participant.
  • When research procedures may result in undesirable consequences for the individual participant, the investigator has the responsibility to detect and remove or correct these consequences, including where relevant, long-term after effects
  • Information obtained about the individual research participants during the course of an investigation is confidential unless otherwise agreed in advance. When the possibility exists that others may obtain access to such information, this possibility, together with the plans for protecting confidentiality, should be explained to the participants as part of the procedure for obtaining informed consent.
  • A psychologist using animals in research adheres to the provisions of the Rules Regarding Animals, drawn up by the Committee on Precautions and Standards in Animal Experimentation and adopted by the American Psychological Association.
  • Investigations of human participants using drugs should be conducted only in such settings as clinics, hospitals, or research facilities maintaining appropriate safeguards for the partidpants.
 
In educational research carried out by graduate students, the principles related to informing participants (c), obtaining permission from the subject or his parents (e), debriefing subjects at the end of the study (h), and protecting confidentiality of research data (j) are the ones most likely to be violated.
The protection of individual privacy in educational research involves two factors: consent of the individual as to what shall be disclosed to the researcher, and confidential use of research data collected on individuals. The researcher should obtain the consent of the individual before gathering data on him. In the case of schoolchildren, the consent of parents and appropriate school personnel should be obtained. Ideally the student should .receive some explanation of the tests and experimental procedures to be used. This explanation must satisfy the student that his participation is important and desirable and that it is to his advantage to cooperate. There are occasions, however, when it would invalidate the research findings to tell the individual beforehand the purpose of the study and the type of information that he will be expected to provide during the course of the research project. For example, in some experiments it may be necessary to give the individual false information in order to experimentally arouse or decrease his motivation. Nevertheless, even in this situation the researcher should still obtain the individual's consent to be in the experiment, and he can tell the individual that he will be informed of the experiment's purpose the study is completed. Also, if possible, the researcher should try to obtain data without using the names of the individuals involved.

There is clear evidence that the results of some studies can be drastically altered if research subjects are informed of all details of the research. For example, in a study by Resnick and Schwartz, volunteer subjects were placed in two groups, were given cards containing a verb and the six pronouns, we, you, they, she, he, and were asked to construct sentences using the verb and one pronoun. During the last 80 of the 100 trials the investigator reinforced the subjects with verbal approval each time the subject constructed a sentence which began with I or we, to determine the effects of the reinforcement. The results showed that use of I-we sentences increased for uninformed subjects and decreased for informed subjects. In this study, fully informing the subjects led to serious distortion of the results. Should the need to inform subjects, even in studies like the work of Resnick and Schwartz where no conceivable harm or danger to the subjects is possible, take precedent over the need to learn more about human behavior?. The effect of verbal reinforcement on human behavior is certainly an important question in education. The pros and cons raised when such studies are considered in relationship to ethical standards certainly merit careful consideration.

Once research data have been collected, the researcher should make certain that no one has access to the data except himself and possibly a few co-investigators. The research subjects, of course, should be told at the outset that will have access to the data. Whenever possible the names of subjects should be removed from data-collection instruments and replaced by a code. This procedure is particularly important to follow when the data are to be stored over a relatively long period of time. The researcher should take particular care with data that could conceivably be subpoenaed. Unfortunately, educational research data do not have privileged status (as does communication between husband and wife, lawyer and client, etc.) in most states. The confidentiality of the individual must further be protected by 'tot giving individual names in any publications that may result from the research project.

The student can avoid problems relating to invasion of privacy if he includes procedures in his research design for individual consent and preservation of confidentiality and if he carries out his project in an ethically responsible manner.