06. Emerging Issues in Ethics Training: Addressing International Concerns and Professional Standards

• In Event: 232 - Informal Discussion Roundtable Session

Abstract

In the wake of scandals involving the use of academic advisors to guide the practice of torture by the U.S. government, expanding and enhancing ethical standards and training efforts across the social sciences is urgent importance. The American Sociological Association is taking important steps to clarify standards for professional behavior and training, in order to protect the status of the profession and ensure the safety of individual researchers. However, establishing clear and comprehensive guidelines for ethics training in international research remains problematic. Many individual countries have specific scholarly regulation procedures and registration practices (Turkey, Greece and Tajikistan for example), other have recently enacted national laws complicating issues of individual privacy and anonymity in research (Russian Federation) and across many regions of the world both local and international sociologists may find themselves under undue scrutiny by authoritarians regimes. How can we best prepare our students to address the unique challenges of conducting ethical research in international settings? What approaches provide and best protection of respondents and researchers? How can we train students to pursue ethical research in contexts lacking national ethical standards or review processes?

Author

• Cynthia Jane Buckley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign