Sunday, 31 March 2013
Last week's class on ethics was fascinating both as a researcher but also as someone interested in the "field of information." Because in a sense, ethics is all about information. Do the participants have the information on possible health risks? privacy issues? possible risks to stress, embarrassment and all such other possibilities? I think Dean said something to the effect that the benefits needed to outweigh the risks. Who makes this judgement? We heard about the composition of the review board. While I think it would be fascinating to review all sorts of proposals, the responsibility to see beyond the words, to imagine the implications for all but especially for those who are not able to imagine (intelligence, ignorance..) is a great one. One should not go through the motions when thinking about an ethics approval. While it is always easier to imagine the benefits to oneself, it is harder to see some of the unintended or hidden drawbacks for the participants.
Mary
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Mary, that is really interesting to think about. As you say a lot of the ethical questions are in regards to information. This is particular tricky when you thing about how different people place different values on things such as privacy. Generally within a western perspective, we emphasize the privacy of an individual, but in other cultures the emphasis is put on the privacy of the group. Universal values are tricky, what is the baseline?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Mary, about how hard it would be to imagine the implications that a certain type of research would have on its subjects. When doing the peer review assignment, I feel like my focus was on critiquing the value of the research and what that research would do to help improve the information field and its community. Certainly, an entirely different review process needs to take place just to determine what this research will do for the subjects, if it will help or hurt them in the long run. This just shows how intricate the review process to approve research really is.
ReplyDeleteI also find it interesting that the criteria for passing research as ethical is that the benefits need to outweigh the risks. Determining what constitutes a benefit and a risk is definitely subjective, and that criteria itself would have needed to be reviewed in order to make it as fair as possible.
When thinking about risk assessment and the benefits of research, I also found the risk matrix that was mentioned in class to be quite interesting. It seemed to me that the composition of the review board might benefit from a little more granularity, depending on the nature of the risk. For example, if the main reason for high risk was due to group vulnerability, then perhaps the review board composition might be made slightly different than a situation where the main reason for high risk was a result of research risk. I also wonder whether the number of review board members might change depending on the risk level to ensure a diversity of views…
ReplyDelete- Rex