Ethics and Research

What does ethical research mean to you before today’s lecture and after today’s lecture and discussion? What insights did you gain from the material? How does your understanding of the ethical issues in research affect your thinking about the implementation of the proposal?

Prior to last week’s lecture and readings, my thoughts on ethical research were about plagiarism, conducting original research and generally about not causing harm to research subjects. I thought of ethics in terms of being honest. After the lecture and readings, I can see that there are many layers to plagiarism and conducting original research. All of the videos we watched highlighted different ethical research scenarios. I also learned there are many other ethical issues such as cultural and gender bias, which are related to how a study is designed and what survey instruments are used. Our class conversation about authorship brought up ethical issues related to gender, and power dynamics between students and professors.  

Two macro ethical issues I had not thought about previously are related to what types of research gets funded and how research results are interpreted and misinterpreted. Do studies involving certain types of populations, proposed by certain types of researchers attract more than their fair share of funding? At the beginning of this class we also talked a lot about how research is used and how results can be taken out of context or misconstrued. I think this is a huge ethical issue and in today’s political environment, I think a lot of people are skeptical about research results that don’t directly relate to or support their interests.   

In regards to implementing my proposal, I think that my approach is ethical, and that the participants would benefit from having access to a social worker. However, I think it would be somewhat of a hardship to withdraw these services at the end of the intervention period. In an ideal world, there would be an ongoing relationship with a local agency, Dominican and the SLF so services could continue. Also, if I was actually implementing the proposal, I would learn more about why there are no regular on-site social services available to SLF residents, or if this is even true across all SLFs in IL. Based on what I know however,  I think the underlying issue is funding and perhaps the misconception that assisted living provides everything a person needs to stay safe and healthy.