We spent this past week with my PhD cohort discussing ethics in academia through a structured, targeted investigation. Our conversations in class led to many more questions (as seems to be the norm with our targeted investigations) about what ethics in academia means, how we can address ethics in academia, why ethics in academia is not talked about as much as epistemology or argument in research, and how we can be more ethical researchers.
This week's deep dive into ethics in research aligned with my first paper submission in graduate school. The week was spent understanding the data, making sense of the statistics, and constantly asking myself, are we being ethical, am I being ethical, how can I be a more ethical researcher, and how can I be a more ethical person?
On a personal note as well this week I read the book Yes Please! By Amy Poehler. I finished it this weekend and it feels like many of the topics she discussed in her memoir also align with being an ethical professional, which in my case is research.
This week I also spent interviewing many undergraduate and graduate students about reflection in their everyday lives and in the classroom. I applied the take-aways I got from our classroom conversations about ethics to research in practice.
Finally, in the process of naming critical events this week another event this week was when I was reminded I tend to be wordy. I have been told this before and it reminds me of a time at the beginning of my undergraduate experience when I was told that my writing was distinguishable from my peers' in a group report because of my style, my wordiness, and my grammar. This is hard to hear but important to be told. I am cognizant of this as I write this post and was even more cognizant of it this week while I was trying to contribute to our paper submission. I have to continue to work intentionally towards improving my writing by taking english classes, writing as often as I can, and reading as much as I can. I also recognize and acknowledge that if no one tells my writing needs improvement I wouldn't know to improve so I am thankful for the critique.
Note: The past two reflection posts have not had a reflection prompt spinner or as structured weekly hints on what to write about and that has been challenging. In parallel with my research assistantship looking at reflection in engineering education, I have been thinking about the role of structure in reflection. Although I have the time limitation with my stopwatch running next to me and I know I could be writing in this personal journey with reflections that tie to the events that 543, it is hard to structure my thoughts on my own.
Name your learning ... on the topic of ethics in research
- Identify what comes to mind when I heard the words ethics in research
- Identify what I am missing from my definition of ethics in research
- Create tangible strategies on how to incorporate ethics in research
- Listen to my peers' suggestions on how to incorporate ethics in research
- Develop further questions I have about ethics in research
- Think about ethics beyond IRB protocol
- Critically consider what thanking a participant or population group means after using them for your research
- Think about the ethics of MTurk
- Think about the ethics of publishing
- Explore how knowing my own identity will help me understand others
Identifying challenges ... on the topic of discussing ethics in research
One challenge that I raised during the class discussion we had this past week was about the ethics of having a conversation about ethics and how it can exclude conversation if we talk about a very specific protocol only half of the group knows about or how if we use words and language that is not understood by everyone how that can create an exclusive conversation. Is that ethical? To have a conversation about ethics where not everyone understands that case studies you are bringing up or where you are doing an activity to understand ethics where everyone does not feel comfortable? This leads to the next challenge I came to when discussing ethics in research, how can you be an ethical researcher without being an ethical human? Are they mutually exclusive? How do we distinguish being an ethical professional, an ethical researcher, and an ethical human being? I think my answer for now is that you must first be an ethical human in order to be an ethical researcher. If as a human, you have biases against a certain group or you take morally ethically questionable actions, then can you be a researcher who sets all of that aside when engaging with participants and with your fellow researchers? I am not sure you can just differentiate the two.
Identifying takeaways ... on the topic of ethics in research
I talked to one of my cohort members about this already but surrounding yourself with good people and good researchers leads to new understandings of what ethics looks like in research. One very small example of this and a big takeaway I have about being an ethical researcher is the inclusion of non-binary people in research. When writing a paper, it can be easy to write "and then his/her design was coded into..." Recognizing that maybe those participants did not identify on the gender binary and writing that is an ethical duty we have as researchers to be more inclusive.
Another takeaway I had from this week was how important it is to be critical of who your research subjects are. They are not subjects outside of your research study. They are students. They are children. They are humans. They are people. Referring to them in your papers as subjects or even participants can be unethical, depending on the context and using the proper language to identify them in your research is important to think about. Building on this conversation of those who chose to participate in your study, it is important to think about the ethical implications of who you recruit and why they opt it. Are we being unethical when we recruit undergraduates who are willing to participate in our study in exchange for free lunch or a $5 Starbucks card? What does ethical compensation look like? Finally, the importance of the follow up with people who chose to participate in your research and the proper way to express gratitude came up in conversation during class time. How often to researchers tell study participants that they will follow up with results from the study once completed? How often is this true? Or how often is it more than just sending them the paper? We had a very productive conversation about how expressing gratitude looks like but also the time limitations, the anonymity limitations, and the feasibility of always going the extra mile to say thank you for participating to the people who sign up for your study.
In conclusion, I feel like this has been one of my most over the place blogs but I actually feel comfortable about the topic of ethics. Even though I have more questions now than when I started I really feel like this topic resonates with many parts of my life that I can connect to. Ethics came to the forefront this week as we worked to submit a poster abstract to a conference and I seriously thought about what putting your name on a paper meant. Ethics came up in my personal fun reading time, as Amy Poehler talked about the ethics of owning up to a mistake when in her professional life she made an unethical decision. Ethics connects personal life and professional life as a researcher for me. Our conversation about ethics in the classroom made me feel more comfortable with my peers to gauge their understanding of ethics and to understand the resources they felt the world needed as we tackle ethics in research.