SOAN*2120
01.21.14
Chapter 12 will be covered on midterm

amisurka@uoguelph.ca nash@uoguelph.ca rhodge@uoguelph.ca chill05@uoguelph.ca ETHICS AND STATISTICS

ETHICS IN FIELD RESEARCH
Impact on the way research is conducted
Humphries: Impersonal Sex in Public Places
Undercover participant in Tearoom Trade (having sex in public restrooms)
Followed people to their cars and took down their license plates and conducted follow-up interview
Asked questions and found that they weren’t deviants outside that subculture  most were married professionals with children
Violated issue of informed consent  the right to know that they’re involved in a study and know the true nature of the study

RESEARCH ETHICS
Privacy  invasion of privacy if asking sensitive questions that attack beliefs and values
Observation without the person’s knowledge is a violation of privacy
If you do invade privacy and you deceive the informed consent, you must uphold two standards
Anonymity
Confidentiality

IMPLICATIONS OF PAST RESEARCH
Code of ethics  review boards
Studies that violate ethics are the catalysts for review boards to organize an ethical code of conduct
All codes basically state that while scientific research is always needed, the subject’s welfare is first and foremost, as well as that ethical considerations take precedence over laws and regulations
Research that’s done now is more time consuming if it involves observing people that don’t know they’re being observed
Moral responsibility vs. knowledge
This only applies to independent research
If we do qualitative research that involves humans or animals, it must go through an ethics review board
These review boards tend to heavily support the moral and legal considerations  if there’s any chance the subjects or researchers will be harmed or compromised, they err on side of caution and don’t condone the research

ETHICS AND FIELD RESEARCH
Relationship between researcher and participant is different than that of lawyer to client
If we are told by the participant that they have done something illegal or plan to then we have a legal obligation to report it
We don’t have a privileged relationship
After the research has begun
The law is a tricky issue for social researchers

ETHICS IN SOCIAL RESEARCH
Most important role in participant observation (especially when observing individuals without permission/knowledge)
Next in experiments
Then interviews where you probe the subject
Quantitative surveys

Lose yourself eminem
I can do anything hedley

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
Measures of Central Tendency
Statistics that summarize central location of variables
Mean
Average
Sum of all the variables divided by total number of variables
Median
The exact midpoint variable
Rearrange all values from lowest to highest (include doubles if any)
Mode
Variable which appears most frequently in the set of variables
If two modes  bimodal
If set of single numbers  multimodal
Measures of Dispersion
Variance (needed to calculate standard deviation)
Standard deviation
Helps us to understand context through which