Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Video Vision Conference - Ethical Considerations

I want to share the notes on ethical learning from CUNY Video Vision conference. Although these principles were presented as they relate to videotaping subjects for reasearch, they can be applied to net research as well.

I want to video tape some of my research subjects:

Is this a concern?
I am not going to hurt anyone.

Research Ethics: a qucik history.

Nurember Code, 1947
"The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential"

Declaration of Helsinki, 1964
"Each potential subject must be adequately informed of the aims, methods, anticipated benefits and the potential hazards and the discomfort it may entail. He must be informed that he is at liberty to abstain from participation in the study and that he is free to withdraw his consent to participation at any time.

The Belmont Report, 1979
National commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.

The Belmont principles:

    Respect for persons:
    Informed consent

    Vulnerable populations with diminished authority: - not recruting subjects when consent is impossible i.e. child overrules parent (subject consent is what matters)

    Privacy - having control over the extent, timing, and circumstances of sharing oneself (physically, behaviorally or intellectually). Privacy relates directly to the person.

    Private information: information which has been provided for specific purposes by an individual and will not be made public (for example, a medical record).

    Confidentiality: methods used to ensure that information obtained by researchers about their subjects is not improperly divulged. Confidentiality relates directly to data



    Beneficence: to do good, and to avoid harm
    Risk/Benefit analysis
    Data Safety
    Experimental design



    Justice: for distribution of benefits and burdens from research

    Not just study the population but give benefits back

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