What Does Creswell Say About The Ethics Of Data Collection Summary

Prompt #1 What does Creswell say about the ethics of data collection? Compare and contrast that with the ethics of data collection one might encounter in the fields of intelligence, counter-terrorism, and protection.

Within the study of the social sciences, qualitative research requires data collection that is both accurate and collected in an ethical manner. The forms of data collection are generally grouped into four basic categories, although new forms are emerging over time, such as journals, blogs, e-mail, and video.1 These four forms, as defined by John W. Creswell in his authored text Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Traditions, are interviews, observations, documents, and audiovisual materials.2 Challenges
with qualitative research can include storing data, protecting sources, considering risks versus rewards, informing subjects of the research requirements, and receiving subject consent for participation within the study. While performing qualitative research and collecting data, ethical challenges can arise. According to Doctor Tom O?Connor, Professor of Criminal Justice at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, ?the origin of codes of research ethics can be traced to the NUREMBERG CODE, a list of rules established by a military tribunal on Nazi war crimes during World War II.?
3 Within the Nuremberg Code, principles outlined include the concept of voluntary consent, avoidance of unnecessary suffering, research termination if harm might occur, and the pursuit of research should be for the good of society. 4 One of the biggest ethical challenges in data collection is the concept of voluntary or ?informed consent?. As specified by ?The Belmont Report? produced in 1979, Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research by The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, the informed consent process consists of three elements that allow a subject to ?choose what shall or shall not happen to them? during the research process.5 These core elements consist of information, comprehension and voluntariness. The information aspect of informed consent establishes disclosure of the type of research administered, ultimate goals of such research, and provides an opportunity for the subject to self withdraw
from the research process if so elected. The comprehension component is the ability for the subject to understand what they are consenting to in a rational manner, without confusion on what research they are participating in. The final component of informed consent is voluntariness, which means a person is not coerced or misinformed so that they consent to research participation against their will.6 The items within ?The Belmont Report? are the foundation for what is now commonly referred to as ?Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects or the ?Common Rule? which was published in 1991 and codified in separate regulations by 15 Federal departments and agencies? 7 Many government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have ethics rules for funded researchers. Besides the forementioned Nuremberg Code, Belmont Report, and the ?Common Rule?, other influential research ethics policies exist including the Ethical Principles of Psychologists (American Psychological Association), Statements on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (American Anthropological Association), and Statement on Professional Ethics (American Association of University Professors).8 These ethics rules cover a variety of topics such as honesty, objectivity, integrity, carefulness, openness, respect for intellectual property, confidentiality, responsible publication, responsible mentoring, respect for colleagues, social responsibility, non-discrimination, competence, legality, animal care and human subjects protection.9
The social sciences have evolved ethically as the Nuremberg Code provided a foundation for ?The Belmont Report? which in turned evolved into the ?Common Rule? and now many fields have their own codified approach to ethics. Rules change as ethical conundrums within research were revealed to the entities that have sponsored the studies or exposed to the public causing an outcry for reform. Examples of bad social science research abound and once these studies are revealed to the academic community and public, generally speaking, changes within the social sciences are considered. Several notable examples of bad research that violate or challenge ethical principles include Laud Humphreys? ?Tearoom Trade? study, Stanley Milgram?s ?Obedience to Authority? study, and the ?Tuskegee Syphilis Study?.10 The ?Tearoom Trade? was a homosexual study done in 1970 which violated personal privacy by exposing men who were performing anonymous sex in public restrooms. Not only did the researcher watch these encounters occur without informed consent, Humphreys confronted participants by tracking them down through their license plates. Utilizing pressure of exposure, interviews of sexual participants created the research data for the study.11 The ?Obedience to Authority? study was performed by Stanley Milgram in 1974 and consisted of participants willing to expose other actors within the study to physical harm via electrical shocks. Even though the screams from another room were faked to see how far a person would go in participating in harming other individuals, the participants in the study weren?t aware of the focus of the study and it created psychological harm to those administering simulated electrical shocks.12, 13 Finally, the ?Tuskegee Syphillis Study? involved the withholding of penicillin from black males to find out the long-term effects of untreated syphilis. ?By the time the study was exposed in 1972, and ended on November 16th of the same year, 28 men had died of syphilis, 100 others were dead due to syphilis related complications, at least 40 wives had been infected and 19 children had contracted the disease at birth.? 14 Eventually, to address the issues in the mentioned studies, regulations have been passed that require human subject research studies to be reviewed by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). IRBs read the testing protocols for studies and decide, based on a variety of determined ethical criteria and established processes, whether standards are met.15 The academic community and government have gone to great lengths to try and ensure ethical standards are adhered to in order to avoid future cases similar to Humphreys, Milgram, and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. However, even with strict ethical standards in place there is no guarantee that studies won?t be tainted by questionable conduct and further reforms may be required.
More recently there has been an outcry by many within the academic community because of research that the government has been performing by utilizing anthropologists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The program known as the Human Terrain System (HTS) was launched in February of 2007 and incorporates the embedding of anthropologists and sociologists with military teams in both countries.16 The American Anthropological Association (AAA) released a statement in 2007 opposing anthropologists engaging in HTS because of concern that performing such research will result in the violation of the AAA code of ethics as well as threaten the safety of the researchers and their subjects.17 Anthropology professor David Matsuda, from East Bay campus of California State University, is participating in the program as a member of a Human Terrain Team (HTT) and states that "There's been a knee-jerk reaction in the anthropology community, that you've been co-opted, that you're a warmonger, like you're clubbing baby seals or something. I came here to save lives, to make friends out of enemies." 18 Ultimately, the military claims that HTTs are being utilized ?to improve the understanding of the local population and [to] apply this understanding to the Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP).?19 Whatever the benefit of such relationships, the AAA and other academics have not embraced the military project and they challenge the ethics of embedded anthropologists. It should be noted that there is a
history of academics participating in government-funded, national security studies. During World War I, anthropologists worked in Central America spying for America under the guise of researchers. Franz Boas, a German-American anthropologist, was censured by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in 1918 for exposing the activities performed by his colleagues. It was only recently that the AAA ?honored the man widely held as the ?father of American anthropology??. 20 Furthermore, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) performed experiments on the military exposing individuals to nerve gas and radiation, as well as performed mind control experiments that involved LSD, hypnosis and surgery.21 Ethical failures within the IC have been exposed over the years via the media, government leaks, and Congressional commissions that have investigated impropriety. The Rockefeller Commission, Church Committee, Pike Committee and Murphy Commission were all government oversight bodies that exposed a wide variety of IC failures and improprieties.22 ?In the Church Committee Reports in the early 1960s it was discovered that CIA funding was involved in a third of all government grants for the social sciences.? 23 Although many academics have avoided such controversial work, other researchers conduct studies because national security grants are lucrative. Some researchers have even conducted studies not knowing the IC was ultimately funding their work.24 Additionally, because of the Export Control Act of 1985, national security research that might be inappropriately released to the public or exposed as funded by the IC can cause academics to be barred from travel overseas, removed from future funding or be hit with other sanctions.25 With the government funding so much social research for national security purposes and the desire for academics to be published, it becomes challenging trying to balance academic needs and ethics within the field of social science. Furthermore, with the need to advance intelligence research and security knowledge through social science studies, by adhering to strict ethical codes that require transparency and informed consent, it would appear to be nearly impossible to balance ethical standards and operational requirements. Paul G. Ericson wrote an essay for the CIA calling for ?The Need for Ethical Norms? and challenging the IC to create specific standards and ethics guidelines to better inform the public and provide strict guidelines for government employees and contractors on proper actions when conducting research and performing intelligence operations.26 However, it is challenging for a covert government group to perform research when the very nature of the research is secretive. Informed consent, which is one of the modern standards in ethical research, would severely hinder the IC and would nearly be impossible in most research situations. However, that does not discourage attempts by the IC to continue to strive for ethical research. In March of 2010, Georgetown University along with the International Intelligence Ethics Association hosted the 5th International Conference On The Ethics Of National Security Intelligence. Sessions covered ethics in intelligence collection, information operations, counterinsurgency, intelligence applications within military operations, anthropology, private information, and culture.27 Ultimately, the IC will continue to struggle with the inherent challenges of research due to the secrecy of such endeavors until ethical standards similar to those within the academic community are established.