The other dimension of trustworthiness is validity, or the degree to which a question, or another kind of measure, gets an accurate response. In other words, does the question measure what it is supposed to measure?
Research Ethics
Ethics is concerned with issues of right and wrong, the choices that people make, and how people justify those choices (Hedgecoe 2016). World War II and the behavior of the Nazis helped make ethics a central issue in research. The Nazis engaged in horrendous medical experiments on inmates in concentration camps. Unethical research was also conducted between 1932 and 1972 at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama on hundreds of poor black American men suffering from syphilis. The researchers were interested in studying the natural progression of the disease over time, but they never told the participants that they were suffering from syphilis. Despite regular visits to collect data from and about the participants, the researchers did not treat them for the disease and allowed them to suffer over long periods of time before they died painfully (Reverby 2009).
A more recent example of questionable research ethics is the case of Henrietta Lacks (Skloot 2011; see also the 2017 HBO movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). Lacks was a poor African American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge or consent, some of her tumor was removed. Cancer cells from that tumor live on today and have spawned much research and even highly successful industries. While those cells have led to a variety of medical advances, a number of ethical issues are raised by what happened to Lacks and subsequently to her family. For example, should the tumor have been removed and its cancer cells reproduced without Lacks and her family knowing about, and approving of, what was intended? Would the same procedures have taken place if Lacks were a well-to-do white woman? Finally, should Lacks’s descendants get a portion of the earnings of the industries that have developed on the basis of her cancer cells?
Henrietta Lacks was responsible for major advances in medical science, all without her knowledge or consent. Cells taken during testing while she was undergoing treatment for cervical cancer in 1951 are still used today. Lacks’s cells continue to be invaluable to researchers, but should the manner in which they were obtained affect how they are used?
Photo Researchers, Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
No research undertaken by sociologists has caused anything like the kind of suffering and death experienced by the people studied in Nazi Germany or at Tuskegee Institute, or even generated an ethical firestorm like the one raging around the Lacks case. Nonetheless, such research is the context and background for ethical concerns about the harmful or negative effects of research on participants in sociological research (the code of ethics of the American Sociological Association can be found online at www.asanet.org/about/ethics.cfm). There are three main areas of concern: physical and psychological harm to participants, illegal acts by researchers, and deception and violation of participants’ trust.
Physical and Psychological Harm
The first issue, following from the Nazi experiments and Tuskegee studies, is concern over whether research can actually cause participants physical harm. Most sociological research is not likely to cause such harm. However, physical harm may be an unintended consequence. In the Robbers Cave research, discussed earlier as an example of a natural experiment, competition and conflict were engendered between two groups of 12-year-old boys. The hostility reached such a peak that the boys engaged in apple-throwing fights and in raids on one another’s compounds.
A much greater issue in sociological research is the possibility of psychological harm to those being studied. Even questionnaire or interview studies can cause psychological harm merely by asking people about sensitive issues such as sexual orientation, drug use, and experience with abortion. This risk is greatly increased when, unbeknownst to the researcher, a participant is hypersensitive to these issues because of a difficult or traumatic personal experience.
Some of the more extreme risks of psychological harm have occurred in experiments. The most famous example is Stanley Milgram’s (1974) laboratory study of how far people will go when they are given orders by those in positions of authority. In it, one group, the “learners,” were secretly paid to pretend that painful shocks were being applied to them by the other group of participants, the “teachers,” who were led to believe that the shocks they thought they were applying were real (Figure 2.6). The researcher, dressed officially in a white coat and projecting an aura of scientific respectability, ordered the teachers to apply shocks that appeared to be potentially lethal. The teachers did so even though the learners, who were in another room and not visible, were screaming with increasing intensity. The research clearly showed that if they were ordered to do so by authority figures, people would violate the social norms against inflicting pain on, and even possibly endangering the lives of, others.
Figure 2.6 The Teacher (T), Learner (L), and Experimenter (E) in the Milgram Experiment
The results of the Milgram experiment are important in many senses, especially what the study did to the psyches of the people involved. The “teachers” came to know that they were very responsive to the dictates of authority figures, even if they were ordered to commit immoral acts. Some of them certainly realized that their behavior indicated they were perfectly capable in such circumstances of harming, if not killing, other human beings. Such realizations had the possibility of adversely affecting the way participants viewed, and felt about, themselves. But the research has had several benefits as well, for both participants and others who have read about the Milgram studies. For example, those in powerful positions can better understand, and therefore limit, the potential impact of their orders to subordinates, and subordinates can more successfully limit how far they are willing to go in carrying out the orders of their superiors.
Another famous study that raises similar ethical issues was conducted by Philip Zimbardo (1973). Zimbardo set up a prison like structure called “Stanford County Prison” as a setting in which to conduct his experiment. Participants were recruited to serve as either prisoners or guards. The “prison” was very realistic, with windowless cells, minimal toilet facilities, and strict regulations imposed on the inmates. The guards had uniforms, badges, keys, and clubs. They were also trained in the methods of managing prisoners.
Philip Zimbardo’s experimental re-creation of prison conditions was so realistic, and the participants were so severely affected by their involvement in it, that the experiment had to be cut short by several weeks. Could this early cutoff have invalidated the research?
Standford University Archives. Used with permission.
The experiment was supposed to last six weeks, but it was ended after only six days when the researchers grew fearful about the health and sanity of the prisoners, whom some of the guards insulted, degraded, and dehumanized. Only a few guards were helpful and supportive. However, even the helpful guards refused to intervene when prisoners were being abused. The prisoners could have left, but they tended to go along with the situation, accepting both the authority of the guards and their own lowly and abused position. Some of the guards experienced psychological distress, but it was worse for the prisoners when they realized how much they had contributed to their own difficulties. Social researchers learned that a real or perceived imbalance of power between researcher and participant may lead the participant to comply with a researcher’s demands even though they cause distress.
Ask Yourself
Are there any other ways to answer the questions Milgram and Zimbardo explored?