This open access textbook offers a practical guide into research ethics for undergraduate students in the social sciences. A step-by-step approach of the most viable issues, in-depth discussions of case histories and a variety of didactical tools will aid the student to grasp the issues at hand and help him or her develop strategies to deal with them. This book addresses problems and questions that any bachelor student in the social sciences should be aware of, including plagiarism, data fabrication and other types of fraud, data augmentation, various forms of research bias, but also peer pressure, issues with confidentiality and questions regarding conflicts of interest. Cheating, ‘free riding’, and broader issues that relate to the place of the social sciences in society are also included. The book concludes with a step-by-step approach designed to coach a student through a research application process.

Introduces students to ethical theory and philosophy. This work provides practical guidance on what ethical theory means for research practice; and, offers case studies to give real examples of ethics in research action.

Ethics in Social Science Research: Becoming Culturally Responsive provides a thorough grounding in research ethics, along with examples of real-world ethical dilemmas in working with vulnerable populations. Author Maria K. E. Lahman aims to help qualitative research students design ethically and culturally responsive research with communities that may be very different from their own. Throughout, compelling first person accounts of ethics in human research—both historical and contemporary—are highlighted and each chapter includes vignettes written by the author and her collaborators about real qualitative research projects.

Brings together international scholars across the social and behavioural sciences and education to address those ethical issues that arise in the theory and practice of research within the technologically advancing and culturally complex world in which we live.

Research in the humanities and social sciences thrives on critical reflections that unfold with each research project, not only in terms of knowledge created, but in whether chosen methodologies served their purpose. Ethics forms the bulwark of any social science research methodology and it requires continuous engagement and reengagement for the greater advancement of knowledge. Each chapter in this book will draw from the empirical knowledge created through intensive fieldwork and provide an account of ethical questions faced by the contributors, placing them in the context of contemporary debates surrounding the theory and practice of ethics. The chapters have been thematically organized into five sections: Feminist Ethics: Cross-Cultural Reflections and Its Implications for Change; Researching Physical and Sexual Violence in Non-Academic Settings: A Need for Ethical Protocols; Human Agency, Reciprocity, Participation and Activism: Meanings for Social Science Research Ethics; Emotions, Conflict and Dangerous Fields: Issues of “Safety” and Reflective Research; and Social Science Education: Training in Ethics or “Ethical Training” and “Ethical Publicizing." This inter-disciplinary volume will interest students and researchers in academic and non-academic settings in core disciplines of Anthropology, Sociology, Law, Political Science, International Relations, Geography, or inter-disciplinary degrees in Development Studies, Health Studies, Public Health Policy, Social Policy, Health Policy, Psychology, Peace and Conflict studies, and Gender Studies. The book features a foreword by His Holiness The Dalai Lama.

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise.

Ethics and integrity in research are increasingly important for social scientists around the world. We are tackling more complex problems in the face of expanding and not always sympathetic regulation. This book surveys the recent developments and debates around researching ethically and with integrity and complying with ethical requirements. The new edition pushes beyond the work of the first edition through updated and extended coverage of issues relating to international, indigenous, interdisciplinary and internet research. Through case studies and examples drawn from all continents and from across the social science disciplines, the book: demonstrates the practical value of thinking seriously and systematically about ethical conduct in social science research identifies how and why current regulatory regimes have emerged reveals those practices that have contributed to the adversarial relationships between researchers and regulators encourages all parties to develop shared solutions to ethical and regulatory problems.

For most of political science's history, discussions about professional ethics had nothing to do with human subjects. Professional ethics involved integrity in the classroom, fair tenure and promotion rule, and the careful avoidance of plagiarism. As most research was observational, there was little need for attention to how scholarly activities might directly affect the subjects of our work. Times have changed. The dramatic growth in the use of experiments in social science, especially overseas, is generating unexpected ethical controversies. The purpose of this volume is to identify, debate, and propose practical solutions to the most critical of these new ethical issues. A leading team of internationally distinguished political science scholars presents the first examination of the practical and ethical challenges of research with human subjects in social science and policy studies. Part 1 examines contextual challenges provided by experiments conducted overseas - questions of culture, religion, security, and poverty. Part 2 examines questions of legal constraints on research, focusing on questions of foreign review of international experiments. Part 3 tackles the critical issues in field experiments, including deception and consent, impact on elections and careers, the boundaries of the public officials' exemption, and the use of partner organizations to avoid Institutional Review Body (IRB) review. Part 4 considers strategies for the future, including training and education, IRB reform, institutional changes, and norm development.

This book gives a voice to debates surrounding social science research ethics in Africa and brings them together in a coherent form to assist readers in being at the forefront of the discussions. The book gives an overview of the importance of research ethics in social sciences, as well as articulating the African influence on the subject matter. Subsequently it looks into specific frameworks and tools that researchers can apply in the process of doing research. Last but not least it also takes an in-depth look at traditional ethical issues pertaining to research in social sciences, through the lens of the African continent. This is the first book on social science research ethics in an African context and an indispensable resource for researchers, students, policy makers and research institutions in or interested in African research ethics.

Medical or hio- ethics has in recent years been a growth industry. Journals, Centers and Associations devoted to the subject proliferate. Medical schools seem increasingly to be filling rare positions in the humanities and social sciences with ethicists. Hardly a day passes without some media scrutiny of one or another ethical dilemma resulting from our new-found ability to transform the natural conditions of life. Although bioethics is a self-consciously interdisciplinary field, it has not attracted the collaboration of many social scientists. In fact, social scientists who specialize in the study of medicine have in many cases watched its development with a certain ambivalence. No one disputes the significance and often the painfulness of the issues and choices being addressed. But there is something about the way these issues are usually handled which seems somehow inappropri ate if not wrong-headed to one trained in a discipline like sociology or history. In their analyses of complex situations, ethicists often appear grandly oblivious to the social and cultural context in which these occur, and indeed to empirical referents of any sort. Nor do they seem very conscious of the cultural specificity of many of the values and procedures they utilize when making ethical judg ments. The unease felt by many in the social sciences was given articulate expression in a paper by Renee Fox and Judith Swazey which appeared in 1984.