SOCI 217 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Laud Humphreys, Center For American Progress, Informed Consent
Week 3- ethical issues
Introduction
• Three major constraints in doing social scientific research
o Scientific constraints
o Administrative constraints
o Research ethics constraint
• Ethical consideration must be kept in mind during all phases of projects
• Ethical concerns in scientific research gained import after 1950s due to infractions of
human rights and harm to subjects
• Examples of violations of human rights:
o 1932-72: bad blood scandal
o 1957-64: CIA funded LSD studies on psychiatric patients in Montreal
o study of prisoners
Ethical codes
• three elements of TCPS 2
o respect for persons
▪ respect autonomy
▪ protect those with diminished autonomy
o concern for welfare
▪ physical, mental, spiritual health
o justice
▪ treat all people fairly
▪ treat all people equitably
• two new policy statements concerning:
o qualitative research
o research involving first nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples of Canada
Using statistics Canada data
• statistics Canada is concerned about maintain the confidentiality of those from whom it
gathers data
• throughout Canada, research data centres have been set up
o purpose- only houses the full data sets
o public domain- many variables are suppressed to protect confidentiality
o central policy- there is restriction of disclosure of info when number of cases is
too few, helping ensure against inadvertent identification of a respondent
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
