Discussion 1: Ethics and the Role of the Institutional Review Board (IRB)

As graduate student, you are responsible for designing and conducting research that is ethical in all aspects. Your course text, Surviving Your Dissertation describes the critical norms for conducting ethical research: (a) Validity of the research, (b) competency of the researcher, (c) beneficence of the research, (d) special populations, and (e) informed consent (pp. 275–276). Some of these norms arose from the scrutiny of well-known controversial, unethical studies.

Your course text Research Methods for Public Administrators describes three “illustrative cases” in Chapter 8: (a) The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is a classic example of the violation of the Nuremberg principles. (b) Another well-known example of deceptive research and a lack of protection of subjects’ privacy is Humphrey’s study on gay men. (c) The final example of deception in research is the Milgram study on participants’ level of obedience in harming others. You may wish to investigate all three of these studies more thoroughly.

In this Discussion, you will examine the role of the IRB, your responsibilities for ensuring that you design an ethical study, and the ways in which you can reduce or eliminate ethical challenges. To prepare for this Discussion, review the Dissertation and Ethics resources listed for the week.

THE ASSIGNMENT
Post in the following ways:
• Explain the role of the IRB
• Explain ethical problems you might experience if you were to conduct
research on your identified topic of research.
• Analyze the impact of these potential ethical challenges. How might
participants be affected, for example?
• Devise ways you might address these ethical challenges to the IRB to ensure
integrity in the research process.
• Analyze the ethical values you hold that underlie your response.

Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.