Considering the Electronic Participant: Some Polemical Observations on the Ethics of On-Line Research

Waskul, Dennis D.

doi:10.1080/713856142

Cited by 143 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The problem with inducements in general is that they can encourage potential subjects to undertake risks that they would not normally accept. Accordingly, inducements are less problematic when the risks to subjects are minimal [36].…”

Section: Informedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Valid informed consent in classroom research is extremely difficult to obtain because of the professor's power over the student's grades. There is always the potential for a student to fear a reprisal in the form of a lower grade for refusing to participate, or to anticipate a benefit in the form of a higher grade for participating [34], [36]. This applies whether the professor intends to reward participants, punish nonparticipants or not.…”

Section: Informedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Note that offering remuneration can also constitute undue influence [34], [36]. The problem with inducements in general is that they can encourage potential subjects to undertake risks that they would not normally accept.…”

Section: Informedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately for ESSE researchers, two of the main subject populations, students and company employees, are considered vulnerable populations by the codes promulgated by Canadian and Australian government funding agencies [22], [28], [34] and the US federal government [36]. Moreover, social science disciplines that often conduct research with students or employees have yet to devise procedures to protect subjects that could easily be applied to the type of long-term classroom studies common in ESSE or to ESSE field studies [13], [14].…”

Section: Informedmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ethical issues in empirical studies of software engineering

Singer¹,

Vinson²

2002

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

149

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The popularity of empirical methods in software engineering research is on the rise. Surveys, experiments, metrics, case studies, and field studies are examples of empirical methods used to investigate both software engineering processes and products. The increased application of empirical methods has also brought about an increase in discussions about adapting these methods to the peculiarities of software engineering. In contrast, the ethical issues raised by empirical methods have received little, if any, attention in the software engineering literature. This article is intended to introduce the ethical issues raised by empirical research to the software engineering research community, and to stimulate discussion of how best to deal with these ethical issues. Through a review of the ethical codes of several fields that commonly employ humans and artifacts as research subjects, we have identified major ethical issues relevant to empirical studies of software engineering. These issues are illustrated with real empirical studies of software engineering.

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Section: Informedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Informedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Informedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Informedmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Ethical issues in empirical studies of software engineering

Singer¹,

Vinson²

2002

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

149

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Herring, 1996a;King, 1996;Schrum, 1997;Walther, 2002;Waskul & Douglass, 1996). Traditionally, research ethics relies on distinctions such as "public" versus "private" spaces, "identified" vs. "anonymous" individuals, and "published" vs. "unpublished" information.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Empirical Data to Reason about Internet Research Ethics

Hudson

Bruckman

Ecscw 2005

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Abstract. Internet technology holds significant potential to respond to business, educational, and social needs, but this same technology poses fundamentally new challenges for research ethics. To reason about ethical questions, researchers and ethics review boards typically rely on dichotomies like "public" versus "private," "published" vs. "unpublished," and "anonymous" vs. "identified." However, online, these categories are blurred, and the underlying concepts require reinterpretation. How then are we to reason about ethical dilemmas about research on the Internet? To date, most work in this area has been grounded in a combination of theoretical analysis and experience gained by people in the course of conducting Internet research. In these studies, ethical insight was a welcome byproduct of research aimed primarily at exploring other ends. However, little work has used experimental methods for the primary purpose of contributing to our reasoning about the ethics of research online. In this paper, we discuss the role of empirical data in helping us answer questions about Internet research ethics. As an example, we review results of one study in which we gauged participant expectations of privacy in public chatrooms (Hudson & Bruckman, 2004b). Using an experimental approach, we demonstrate how participants' expectations of privacy conflict with the reality of these public chatrooms. Although these empirical data cannot provide concrete answers, we show how they influence our reasoning about the ethical issues of obtaining informed consent.

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Digital Ethnography

Kaur‐Gill

Dutta

2017

The International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods

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Digital ethnography, an emerging field in ethnography poses questions about the communicative phenomena taking place in a technologically mediated world. Digitized spaces today are where communities of all kinds exist. Experiences of day‐to‐day realities take place in digitally connected spaces and the storied lives of communities are told through the online sphere. These spaces are where identities are negotiated, cultural practices enacted, and social phenomena of various kinds are manifested, a worthy area for interpretation for ethnographers interested in the tradition of story‐telling to understand the social world. The entry discusses digital ethnography and what the process entails, the emergence of the method of inquiry, and the various debates that currently exist regarding the value of conducting ethnography in online spaces. It presents the various issues and contentions digital ethnographers grapple with when identifying their field site for interpretation, and considers various perspectives on the nature of conducting digital ethnography.

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Considering the Electronic Participant: Some Polemical Observations on the Ethics of On-Line Research

Cited by 143 publications

References 6 publications

Ethical issues in empirical studies of software engineering

Ethical issues in empirical studies of software engineering

Using Empirical Data to Reason about Internet Research Ethics

Digital Ethnography

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