Chapter 5 - Ethical Issues in Social Work Research PDF

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Notes from Professor Brown's class on Chapter 5 - Ethical Issues in Social Work Research....

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Chapter 5 - Ethical Issues in Social Work Research ● Introduction ● Ethical guidelines in social work research ○ NASW code of ethics ■ If decisions about ethics of research involve subjective value judgments in which we must weigh potential benefits of research against costs to participants, then those decisions pose dilemmas ○ Voluntary participation and informed consent ■ SW research often represents an intrusion into people’s lives ■ No one should be forced to participate and all participants must be aware that they are participating in a study ● They must be informed of all the consequences of the study and they must consent to participate in it ■ Institutional review board (IRB) ○ No harm to the participants ○ Anonymity and confidentiality ■ Anonymity ● Respondent may be considered anonymous when the researcher cannot identify a given response with a given respondent ● Interview survey respondent can never be considered anonymous bc interviewer collects information from identifiable respondent ● Ensuring anonymity makes it difficult to keep track of who has/hasn’t returned questionnaires ■ Confidentiality ● Researcher is able to identify a given person’s responses but essentially promises not to do so publicly ○ Deceiving participants ■ Sometimes it’s useful and even necessary to identify yourself as a researcher ■ Sometimes researchers admit they are doing research but fudge about why they are doing it or for whom ○ Analysis and reporting ■ Several ethical obligations to participants in a social work study ■ Ethical obligations to your professional colleagues too ● Weighing the benefits and costs ○ The most ethical course of action for researchers to take is not always clear-cut ○ Sometimes it’s difficult to judge whether the long-term good to be derived will outweigh the harm done by the ethically questionable practices that may be required for adequate scientific validity ○ An illustration: living with the dying--use of participant observation ○ Right to receive services versus responsibility to evaluate service effectiveness ■ Most critical ethical dilemma in social work research pertains to the right of clients in need to receive services ● And whether the benefit of improving the welfare of clients in the

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long run ever justifies delaying the provision of services to some clients in the short run Three ethical controversies ○ Observing human obedience ■ To observe people’s willingness to harm others when following orders, Milgram experiment conducted ○ Trouble in the Tearoom ■ Second illustration conducted by grad student and published in 1970 book called “Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places” by Humphreys ● Wanted to study homosexual acts between strangers meeting in public restrooms in parks ■ Stirs emotions and contains ethical issues about which people disagree ■ Was Humphreys ethical in what he did? Were some parts acceptable and some not? ○ Social worker submits bogus article to test journal bias ■ First well-publicized ethical controversy to involve a social worker’s research ■ William Epstein started with hypothesis that journal editors were biased in favor of publishing research articles whose findings confirmed the effectiveness of evaluated social work interventions and biased against publishing articles whose findings failed to support the effectiveness of tested interventions ■ Fabricated a fictitious study and submitted it Institutional review boards ○ Vary in amount and format of materials they require to describe the proposed research ○ May require certain modifications be made to make research acceptable Bias and insensitivity regarding gender and culture ○ Gender and cultural bias and insensitivity can impair the methodological quality of a study ■ Can therefore impair the validity of its findings ○ Guidelines to avoid gender bias and insensitivity in one’s research ■ If a study is done on only one gender, make that clear in the title and narrative and don’t generalize findings to other gender ■ Don’t use sexist language/concepts ■ Don’t use double standard in framing research question ■ Don’t overemphasize male-dominated activities in research instruments ■ In analyzing data, look for ways in which findings might differ for men/women ■ Don’t assume that measurement instruments used successfully with males are automatically valid for women ■ Be sure to report the proportion of males and females in your study sample

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Politics and values ○ Line between ethical issues and politics and values in social work research is fine ○ People disagree on political aspects of research just as they disagree on ethical ones ○ Scholars who believe that social research is never really value-free typically recommend that we be aware of our values and describe them in upfront manner ○ Social research and race ■ Nowhere have social research and politics been more controversially intertwined than in the area of race relations...