Scenario 3
In the third scenario, three graduate students were chatting one evening about their frustrations. Student A said that she had written a final paper for a course taught by her adviser. When she asked him if the paper was worthy of submitting to a conference, her adviser said that it is worth submitting and suggested the insertion of a few references. He then requested that he be listed as the paper’s coauthor. Student B then shared the story of his adviser’s request. He explained that as he wrote his dissertation he received wonderful support from his adviser, but once the dissertation was completed his adviser insisted on being first author on all publications coming out of the dissertation research. Student C trumped all three by saying that her adviser told her that he owns the data and all intellectual property (IP) coming from the dissertation because he consented to supervise her research.
How is authorship resulting from your research determined?
Who owns the IP and data from your research?
Scenarios 1, 2, and 3 all represent ethics violations related to authorship and publishing, and they all represent patterns of faculty behavior that occur quite more often than we might prefer to believe. What would you do in each scenario? In each of the scenarios, the faculty adviser has immense power over the student’s future academic career. An adviser who refuses to write a letter of recommendation for a student for a job or graduate school or who writes an unflattering letter can cause permanent damage to the student’s career. Davis and Madsen considered these and other ethical scenarios on their blog post, which is a very useful resource (http://ethicist.aom.org/2013/02/ethics-in-research-scenarios-what-would-you-do). You can also refer to the research ethics sites in the Web Resources and Further Reading sections toward the end of the chapter.
Conclusion
Choosing appropriate guidelines for text mining research can pose a serious challenge. Watson, Jones, and Burns (2007) suggested that it is impractical to suppose any single set of guidelines could address all issues concerning online research due to the diversity of online platforms and communities. Hair and Clark (2007) made the point that what might be considered ethical research conduct in one community might be considered unethical in others. In light of this uncertainty, it is critically important that you pay close attention to what is considered ethical conduct within the online community or communities you choose to study. And you should consider multiple sets of guidelines for your text mining research project rather than a single set. If a review of literature from within your academic discipline does not provide clear ethical guidelines for text mining research or other forms of research using user-generated online data, you should consult literature from closely related fields.
Research involving the collection of data about people through social media and networking sites involves many of the same considerations as any other research with human participants, including determining appropriate informed consent processes, assuring that participation is voluntary whenever possible, protecting the privacy of individuals and the confidentiality of data collected, and minimizing risks to participants. Clearly, if you are working within a university you must consult with your IRB before collecting or analyzing any user-generated textual data.
Key Terms
Anonymize 33
Ethical guidelines 27
Informed consent 29
Institutional review board (IRB) 27
Intellectual property (IP) 37
Password-protected data 33
Plagiarism 40
Privacy 27
Prompted data 35
Public domain 32
Registration 33
Highlights
IRBs are university committees that approve, monitor, and review behavioral and biomedical research involving humans.
Consult AoIR and other professional research associations’ guidelines before collecting data that involves humans.
You must use all available evidence to determine whether data you are considering using should be considered to be in the public or private domain.
If data are in the public domain, you must determine whether users have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
In order to make determinations about users’ expectation of privacy, note whether the websites, apps, or other platforms you are using to collect data require member registration and whether they include privacy policies that specify users’ privacy expectations.
In your research papers, always use pseudonyms for users’ user names and full names.
Because the process of seeking informed consent is onerous and requires the creation and administration of an IRB-approved informed consent form, text mining researchers often prefer to use data that are clearly in the public domain.
Authorship and publishing present ethical challenges due to power dynamics within universities (see O’Leary, 2014, Chapter 4). In case you are concerned about authorship and publication of your own work or the work of a friend or colleague, you should consult the Davis–Madsen ethical scenarios and other web resources listed at the end of the chapter.
Review Questions
Under what circumstances can a social scientist gather data without gaining informed consent?
How can text mining research be used to benefit science and society?
How should data collected under unethical conditions be treated? Should it be used just like data collected under ethically rigorous conditions?
Discussion Questions
Closely read the privacy policies of three social media websites or apps. Is it reasonable to consider the comments and posts on these platforms to be in the public domain? Why or why not?
What impact will your research project have on the community from which participants are drawn?
How would you apply the concept of informed consent to your own research?
Web Resources
2012 AoIR report “Ethical Decision-Making and Internet Research: Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee” (http://aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf)
The APA’s report “Psychological Research Online: Opportunities and Challenges” (www.apa.org/science/leadership/bsa/internet/internet-report.aspx)
The British Psychological Society’s “Ethics Guidelines for Internet-Mediated Research” (www.bps.org.uk/system/files/Public%20files/inf206-guidelines-for-internet-mediated-research.pdf)
The Ethicist Blog from the Academy of Management (http://ethicist.aom.org)
The Office of Research Integrity, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (http://ori.hhs.gov). This federal government website provides not only federal policies and regulations but also training