Knowing the Right Things to Do, Doing the Right Things to Know

• In Event: Roundtable Session 66
  In Roundtable Session: Tensions Between What We Know and What We Do: Research Praxis in Higher Education

Abstract

This paper examines the tensions between processes intended to inform, but can further marginalize and exclude community epistemologies. Addressing the need for change in IRB policies and procedures establishes methodological frameworks for empirical study conducted by my fellow presenters, setting the stage for why they are doing their research and the manner in which they are doing it.

Before the twentieth century, research ethics were guided by individual conscience, religious and professional codes of conduct. Historical events in the second half of the twentieth century promoted the establishment of elaborate research rules/regulations to protect individual and public interests. As the amount of research on humans grew, codes to protect the subjects of research also grew with the notion of risk versus benefit as well as informed consent.

The horrors of Nazi medical experiments in concentration camps produced the Nuremberg Code. However, this and other existing codes did not deal with compliance and enforcement. The Declaration of Helsinki, recently revised in 1996, built on the Nuremberg code, insisting that research is justified when the degree of risk does not exceed humanitarian importance of the knowledge to be gained (Schneider, 2011). The Belmont Report, 1978, continues the focus on the individual (not collectives) with four defining elements: respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice (Gilbert, 2006).

Institutions of higher learning have addressed these elements with Institutional Review Boards establishing codes of research conduct to ensure ethical research practices. These codes focus on assessing individual risks, rather than communities, continuing to perpetuate the perception that domains of “knowledge production” are the sole right of academic researchers (Flicker, Travers, Guta, McDonald, and Meagher, 2007). These IRB restraints become increasingly important when research involves multiple partners who may become principal investigators in research projects, challenging the notion that research is value-neutral, while also promoting research with immediate application (Brown, Morell-Frosh, Brody, Altman, Rudel, Senier, and Perez, 2007). Community issues are then defined by their help in the design and implementation of effective interventions. This approach recognizes that individuals exist within larger social, political, and economic contexts shaping factors that promote and/or negatively influence behaviors (Lantz, Viruell-Fuentes, Israel, Softley, and Guzman, 2001).

Reasons to challenge traditional research methods are reflected in situations of rapid ethnic change. Standard qualitative methods may work with the relatively assimilated, but less so with newcomers, elders, and children; and some, especially immigrants, may be apprehensive about U.S. bureaucracy and wish to avoid it (Wolf, Griffith, Hernandez, Kuo, and Mariampolski, (1994).

Institutions of higher learning have made great strides in research strategies, policies, and procedures that are innovative, protective, and progressive. However, there are times when these strategic moves may not be effective or in the best interest of communities and to social justice/change. Continued evaluation modifying the ways we accomplish the goals of creating and disseminating knowledge must do more than inform. They must empower and keep pace with the needs of changing society.

Author

• Irene Maya Ota, University of Utah