16 Social workers should educate themselves, their students, and their colleagues about responsible research practices. (NASW, 2016)
Source: Copyrighted material reprinted from the National Association of Social Workers, Inc.
The first theme noted in the above list is the expectation that social workers will engage in research that contributes to the knowledge base of the profession and the enhancement of practice. Thus, you do not have the option of avoiding all efforts at research to make sure you avoid ethical problems. You are expected to contribute. You are also expected to understand the principles and policies that guide the assurance of ethical research practice.
The most profound requirement enumerated in Exhibit 3.1 is that research participants must be protected from any harm that might come from the research experience. This is seldom an issue in human service research because the participants are typically asked only to supply information. Medical experiments that put people into hypnosis or administer drugs or give electric shocks are in an entirely different arena on this issue.
In evaluation research, confidentiality is one of the issues. Persons who are asked to participate in research are normally informed that their responses will be treated confidentially. Often this is guaranteed by asking for an anonymous response. This procedure assures the protection of privacy.
Another issue is voluntary participation in research. In social work research, you will almost always find that participation is voluntary. This means that you should not ask people to provide data for your study in a way that might be perceived as coercive. This also means that an agency does not conduct studies where the clients are made to feel that their eligibility for continued service depends on their participation in your study. You have reviewed the concept of vulnerable population. This concept helps us understand the importance of voluntary participation and the fact that some people are vulnerable to not understanding this right.
Honesty is another ethical theme. You should not be deceitful with clients in either your practice actions or your use of human subjects in research. This includes the accurate reporting of research findings. Social work research is not a process of justification; it is a process of discovery. You will encounter this theme many times in this book.
The Code of Ethics warns against the dangers of engaging in actions that constitute a conflict of interest. You should not ask the clients to participate in a study simply because you will make money from it. There must be a better reason.
Finally, the Code of Ethics enumerates the ethical responsibility of using knowledge to guide practice. A major part of that knowledge comes from research. For you to ignore evidence about your intended social work practices would be a violation of the Code of Ethics.
Major Principles About Protection of Human Subjects in Research
There are several major principles that the IRB will employ to evaluate a given proposal to determine if it should be approved. The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative provides online courses on the use of human subjects in research. In this training is information about the history of IRB reviews of proposals for the use of human subjects for research. According to the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (n.d.), the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research met in 1979 and prepared the Belmont Report. This report identifies three basic principles that underlie all human subject research:
1 Respect for persons
2 Beneficence
3 Justice
The principle of respect deals with autonomy and self-determination. People should be allowed to choose for themselves the risk they wish to undertake. Study subjects have full autonomy when they can understand the risks involved and have the freedom to volunteer without coercion.
The principle of beneficence requires that we minimize harm and maximize benefits. Risk assessment is a key theme. The principle of justice requires us to design research that does not unduly target its risks to certain groups of people and fails to treat different types of people equably or fairly. If you plan to collect data from people in prisons, you can expect the IRB to give your proposal a full review because of the vulnerable nature of the prison experience. If your study is about prison life, you will probably be okay with that because the class of people who are the participants is the same as the class of people who will benefit from the results.
Informed Consent and Privacy
For most research studies, informed consent is required. This means that the study subjects have given their consent, and they were clearly informed about the risks and were truly given the opportunity to refrain from participation without coercion. In this process, information about risk should be complete. There are a few exceptions where consent is not required, but these situations rarely refer to human service evaluation studies, so they will not be discussed here.
A key issue is the subject’s ability to give informed consent. Research using children as research subjects often requires full review because children are not in a position to give fully informed consent. Research involving persons of limited literacy or intellectual ability requires more care in the assurance of this consent.
Not only must subjects give their consent, but they must also be given the opportunity to withdraw from participation at any time they desire. In this regard, the subject must be notified that there will be no penalty for withdrawal, such as losing service benefits.
Privacy refers to our ability to control access to information about ourselves. Confidentiality (for research subjects) refers to implied or explicit contracts among individuals about the sharing of information one person may have about another. To the extent feasible, privacy should be protected by the researchers.
There is a distinction between private behavior and public behavior. Public behavior can be observed for research purposes without the need for formal review of research proposals, whereas private behavior cannot. Private behavior is that behavior that one would normally expect to be private. This would include a conversation between two people alone on a park bench where there clearly is no one within hearing distance. The use of an electronic device for hearing conversations from someone 30 yards away could be interpreted as a violation of privacy because it would be reasonable for these individuals to believe that their conversation was private. However, the behavior of a group of people playing football in a park would be considered public behavior.
Risks and Benefits
A risk is a disadvantage to the study subject, while a benefit is an advantage to either the study subject or society in general. Risk normally refers to privacy or harm to participants. Examples of the latter are procedures that place study subjects under stress or risky procedures like administration of drugs. Asking a client to complete a scale designed to measure target behavior normally holds no risk of harm from the procedures, so the issue of invasion of privacy is usually the only theme to be addressed in a typical study of human services.
When there are risks, you must review the balance of risks with benefits. Sometimes the risk is only held by the study subject, and the benefit is to society in general. In this case, you will determine if the benefit warrants the risk. This is not an easy question to answer.
An issue you should consider when facing risks is whether you have available procedures that are less risky. Even if you could cogently argue that the benefits of this study will outweigh the risks, you will be expected to employ a less risky procedure that will achieve equal benefits. Whatever the risks, they should always be minimized to the extent feasible.
Justice
Justice refers to whether certain vulnerable populations are being singled out for unusual burden from the study procedures being undertaken. This is not