research and ethics

[dennis roberts]

i think it is rather pointless to try to make too many distinctions between research and other activities when it comes to gathering data on humans ... the threshold factors that will ultimately put it in one category or another ... are rather ambiguous

what IS important is to ask:

are we using human Ss?
how can we "protect" human Ss from unethical practice?
how do we insure (within reason) that we are not coercing Ss to give data to us?
how do we insure (within reason) that what we do to Ss is not putting them in harms way?

i think that many institutions have figured out how to accomplish these goals without unduly putting bureaucratic red tape in the ways of "researchers" (broadly defined) while many have not and have gone so overboard in "requirements" for projects that have 0 coercion/potential harm ...



_________________________________________________________
dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university
208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm
.
.
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the
problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at:
. http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ .
=================================================================