Doing Ethnographic Research. Kimberly Kirner

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       Justification:

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      Activity 2.3: Exploring Relationships of Responsibility

      Background: In its code of ethics, the AAA outlines a number of considerations for researchers, particularly those of openness and honesty with a number of entities and the importance of using findings in appropriate and timely ways. While researchers’ most significant responsibilities are to the people they study, we’re also responsible to scholarship and science and to the public as a whole.

      Connection: Our responsibilities to scholarship ensure that we facilitate rather than impede the advancement of the social sciences as a whole, our discipline, and the work of our colleagues. The single most important responsibility we have to the public at large is to understand the potential harm that may come from our products we disseminate and to make our results available in ways that minimize harm.

      This activity will help you look for complementary and conflicting researcher responsibilities.

      Key Terms and Concepts

       Human subjects

       Intellectual property

       Informed consent

       Ways to reciprocate trust

       Interested parties: funders (the organizations funding your research), academic supervisors and organizations (your university, your supervisory faculty member), colleagues (others who study what you’re studying), the public, and your participants and people who would be directly impacted by your research

      Instructions

      Based on the case studies provided, fill in the Researcher Responsibilities Graphic Organizer (at the end of the chapter) to describe the responsibilities a researcher has to the interested parties, including at least two complementary and two conflicting responsibilities (and identify which groups’ needs are in conflict).

      Common Mistakes

      Common mistakes students make when identifying complementary and conflicting responsibilities:

       Insufficient clarity: Students do not identify which groups are attached to which responsibilities—and therefore where the conflict lies.

      Ask Yourself

       Do I need to ask any clarifying questions?

      Sample Problem

      You are doing thesis research on the health of immigrant mothers in a neighborhood in a large city that has high poverty rates and high maternal mortality rates. You are trying to understand the challenges facing women’s health, especially during pregnancy, and how women have learned to cope with fewer resources in health care, nutrition, and other basic needs. You are working on a smaller piece of a larger project on health disparities in the community, under the funding and supervision of your thesis adviser, who is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The county’s Department of Public Health plans to use your findings to advertise well-woman and prenatal care to women, but you’re finding that some of the women avoid the county’s help because they feel that it isn’t very sensitive to their cultural needs and traditions. You worry you’ll be viewed as someone trying to get them to take certain actions, rather than as a researcher independent of the government.

      Example

      Non-example

      Problem

      Your senior capstone project is on the experiences of students with children at your university. You don’t have any funding from outside sources, but your university’s administration has told you and your project adviser that they really hope that you find that the resources they offer (e.g., onsite child care and breastfeeding rooms) are being used and appreciated by students. What you’re finding, however, is that many student parents face big challenges in accessing their education, including professors who don’t understand their needs and institutional resources being insufficient (e.g., childcare has a waiting list, breastfeeding rooms require a lot of walking across campus). You want to make a good impression, and the university’s administration has said they’d like to meet with you and your adviser about the project and feature it in the campus newspaper.

       (Use the worksheet at the end of the chapter to complete this problem.)

      Activity 2.4: Ethical Dilemmas

      Background: There are gaps between professional standards and personal ethics. These dilemmas are built into the nature of social science research itself and have to do with positive goals that conflict with each other by their very nature in certain contexts. Researchers must make decisions regarding ethical dilemmas and justify these decisions based on their discipline’s code of ethics.

      This activity will help you make and justify decisions regarding ethical dilemmas based on case examples using the AAA Code of Ethics.

      Key Terms and Concepts

       Moral relativism

       Activism

       Cultural relativism

       Vulnerable populations

       Intellectual property

       Responsibilities to interested parties

       Ways to reciprocate trust with participants and host communities

       Conflicting “goods”

      Instructions

      Using the prompts and case examples,¹ make decisions regarding ethical dilemmas and justify your decisions using the AAA Code of Ethics.

      ¹ Case examples were taken and slightly abbreviated and modified from Jacobs, Sue-Ellen. N.d. “Cases and Solutions.” In American Anthropological Association Ethics Handbook. Accessed July 22, 2018. http://www.americananthro.org/LearnAndTeach/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=12912&RDtoken=38123&amp&navItemNumber=731;userID=5089.

      Common Mistakes

      Common mistakes students make when making ethical choices and justifying their decisions:

       Not carefully reading the case example (or, in the case of a “live” ethical dilemma, not observing all the specific details of the issue)

       Not carefully considering potential negative outcomes for various parties

       Not