Exam 14: Ethical Issues in Conducting the Study

Researchers should attempt to gain full access to medical files or lists of patients so that these potential participants can be contacted directly by the researcher.

Brokered data are obtained when the cooperating agency contacts participants on behalf of the researcher.

If an experimental treatment significantly, positively affects outcomes, control group members should also be offered the treatment.

Lists of participants should be kept confidential and destroyed after the project.

The Institutional Review Board does not have to review the following research:

Focus groups pose special confidentiality problems because participants may talk outside the group.

Some ways to ensure data integrity include:

If the researcher changes the procedure or instruments, re-approval must be obtained from the Institutional Review Board.

What research should be reviewed by the Human Subjects Committee?

Financial inducements may affect the "voluntariness" of research.

Deception is allowed in research if the researcher can demonstrate that it will do no harm.

Ways to ensure confidentiality to participants include:

The Institutional Review Board will want to see:

The essence of privacy is that the participant is free to choose what he/she will share with the researcher.

When using a placebo control group, the Institutional Review Board needs to be convinced that such a group is not being deprived of a benefit that it already has.

Some researchers believe that concealment or deception is necessary when important behaviors would disappear with fully informed consent.

Consent forms should be kept in a secure place for three years.

Rather than using deception, researchers can collect sensitive data by:

Most good research (qualitative and quantitative) begins with pilot testing.

Data must be anonymous and confidential.