Communication Research
Lab Week 2 - Research Ethics, the National Ethics Application Form, using library databases cont.

You tutor should ask every student in class to explain what their individual topic of interest will be for the remainder of the semester.

Please make sure that the topic is amenable to using survey research. In other words if your topic is drink driving in Sydney, then the survey would best be structured to discover what people THINK and FEEL about drink driving, as opposed to how people act when they are drunk. Behavioural questions are certainly possible to ask, but many people lie about their own drink driving, so asking questions about opinions is a safer alternative.


 flash tute 1

Please click this link to access the tutorial (above) in developing your own research question.

An audio lecture for this week, Research Ethics in Cyberspace is available and so is the Powerpoint slideshow. You may need to listen to this from home, since mp3 files are limited at UWS. Myra Gurney has a detailed powerpoint show (worth checking out).

Make sure to at least scan the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans

Another excellent resource is Roger Clarke's Ethical Issues Paper.

This week we shall be continuing to use a variety of scholarly databases in order to look up certain topics for our research topics. We want you to decide on a topic this week.

Some of you sent an email last week. How did you address your lecturer/tutor in that email last week? Wasn't it a formal situation? So did you use formal language? Or colloquial language? How did you greet and say good-bye? Please read what Kaitlin Sherwood has to say about e-mail vs ordinary paper communication.

cartoon 1                                     youtube video  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHBcvrRLRMI


Exercise 1.2: we started this one last week. For those who were away, or not enrolled:

1. Choose a topic of interest to you, not necessarily the one which you used last week. Your task is to create a research question around this topic. eg for the topic terrorism, you could use "How does the Australian Internet media portray terrorism?"

2. Open up the UWS Library's electronic databases. Choose a different database to last week: Academic Search Complete, Academic OneFile, ABI/INFORM or Expanded ASAP, PsychInfo, ERIC or Social Science Plus or Factiva (for newspapers).

3. Do a full text search looking for "peer-reviewed" articles, i.e. academic papers as opposed to popular newspaper and magazine articles. Peer-reviewed means that the paper has been reviewed by other academics and reflects high quality research, not just good journalism. A peer reviewed article may take months or years to write whereas a magazine article can take as little as a day or two. Also check the "Full-text" boxes to narrow your search down. You can always uncheck these two boxes later if you find you need more references.

4. You can always broaden your search parameters later. If you know certain journals then you can include only those. Use the Cite or Cite This button to format your reference, but remember that the databases do make mistakes!

5. Each separate database is different in terms of its options and shortcuts. PsychInfo and Eric will only show you abstracts, which means you may have to find the full article via inter-library loan. However some abstracts are enough to use in your literature reviews.

6. Use google scholar in order to search for the latest conference papers and Web-based papers. Use the Web as a last resort.

You should end up with the beginnings of your literature review for the Introduction to your Proposal. You need to also have some systematic way of ordering your found articles (and what they say). Chronological order works many times, but some form of category system of previous research is also very commonplace in research articles.

HINT: You should NOT use any quotes in your literature review, only paraphrases such as "Smith and Jones (2001) found that kissing in public was an uncommon occurrence in Saudi Arabia." This is a good way to actually record your articles for later use. Do not be tempted to use the entire Abstract for the paper.

An even better way to use references is to make a statement of your own, and back it up with a parenthesised citation, eg. "Kissing in public remains an artifact of Western democratic countries, but is frowned upon in many other cultures (Scollon and Scollon, 1996; Archee and Gurney, 2006)."

CLASS ACTIVITY (mandatory)

Fill out the Ethics Application Form - check out the NEAF website and Form Questions (in Excel) -  as if you were going to submit it to the HER Panel. Please show another student in the class to obtain some feedback on your ethics application. Then add the application to your proposal for week 5.

OR for those amongst you who have problems answering over 500 questions, we have prepared an abridged version of the NEAF Ethics Form to make it much easier to submit your Ethics application.

Either the NEAF pdf or the abridged application MUST be submitted with your Proposal.


Exercise 2.1:  do some research on what constitutes a good Consent Form. This varies from country to country. Produce a draft Consent Form, possibly from UWS or another Australian university.

A bit of history, from Wikipedia:

 The  Nuremberg code has been the impetus for many of the Research Ethics guidelines in use today and includes such principles as informed consent and absence of coercion; properly formulated scientific experimentation; and beneficence towards experiment participants. There are so many similarities between the Nuremberg code and the NHMRC guidelines.

The ten points of the Nuremberg Code

The 10 points are, (all from United States National Institutes of Health) [2]

  1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him/her to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonable to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment. The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.
  2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
  3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
  4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
  5. No experiment should be conducted where there is a prior reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
  6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
  7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
  8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
  9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
  10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

Further Exercises:

Do some research on one or two of these exercises for homework and your portfolio.

Exercise 2.2:  Ethical Principles

1. Give 2 examples of vulnerable populations.

2. Can you pay participants in a research project?

4. You are going to analyse last year's data from records to determine age profile of clients. No names will be used in the report. Does this study need ethical review?


Exercsie 2.3: Informed Consent

1. How could you demonstrate that you received the informed consent of illiterate participants in a survey?

2. You hire a market research firm to carry out a research project. Are they exempt from obtaining informed consent?

3. Do journalists and media professionals need to obtain informed consent from the people they interview?

Exercise 2.4: MEDIA STORY

dolphin pic


Researchers find bisexual and exclusively gay dolphins
3/30/2012
http://now.msn.com/researchers-find-bisexual-and-exclusively-gay-dolphins

Dolphins are considered such radiantly happy creatures that "dolphin assisted therapy" (aka, hanging out with dolphins)
is practiced as a way to treat human physical and mental suffering. Well, maybe an open society is part of the dolphin's
allure, too. According to one study of 120 bottlenose dolphins in Australia, researchers found a lot of male dolphins enjoy
"extensive bisexuality." And not just that, but some pairs engage in "exclusive homosexuality," reports Discovery News.
Pairs, trios or small groups of male dolphins will form exclusive groups that are sexual, social, and sustainable. One herd
of seven males spent 17 years together in an intimate and affectionate clique.


Ok, is this a joke, or does Flipper really have a limp ummm, flipper? Do some research here, find the real story, and work out how the blazes this story made it to print in many countries for the past couple of years.