Research Ethics

Alia R. Tyner-Mullings

 

Practicing sociologists and sociology students have a lot to consider when conducting research. Researchers must try to be skillful and fair-minded in their work, especially as it relates to their human subjects. Researchers must obtain participants’ informed consent and inform subjects of the responsibilities and risks of research before they agree to partake. During a study, sociologists must also ensure the safety of participants and immediately stop work if a subject becomes potentially endangered on any level. This chapter will discuss some of the ways this happens and what happens when it does not.

Researchers are required to protect the privacy of research participants whenever possible. Even if pressured by authorities, such as police or courts, researchers are not ethically allowed to release confidential information. Researchers also must make results available to other sociologists, must make public all sources of financial support, and must not accept funding from any organization that might cause a conflict of interest or seek to influence the research results for its own purposes. The American Sociological Association, or ASA, maintains a code of ethics—formal guidelines for conducting sociological research—consisting of principles and ethical standards to be used in the discipline. It also describes procedures for filing, investigating, and resolving complaints of unethical conduct. The ASA’s ethical considerations shape not only the study but also the publication of results.

Pioneer German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) identified another crucial ethical concern. Weber understood that personal values could distort the framework for disclosing study results. While he accepted that some aspects of research design might be influenced by personal values, he declared it was entirely inappropriate to allow personal values to shape the interpretation of the responses. Sociologists, he stated, must establish value neutrality, a practice of remaining impartial, without bias or judgment, during the course of a study and in publishing results (1949). Sociologists are obligated to disclose research findings without omitting or distorting significant data.

Many sociologists believe it is impossible to set aside personal values and retain complete objectivity. Instead, they caution readers to understand that sociological studies may, by necessity, contain a certain amount of value bias. It does not discredit the results but allows readers to view them as one form of truth rather than a singular fact. Some sociologists attempt to remain uncritical and as objective as possible when studying cultural institutions. Value neutrality does not mean having no opinions. It means striving to overcome personal biases, particularly subconscious biases, when analyzing data. It means avoiding skewing data in order to match a predetermined outcome that aligns with a particular agenda, such as a political or moral point of view. Investigators are ethically obligated to report results, even when they contradict personal views, predicted outcomes, or widely accepted beliefs.[1]

The research that ethnographers do requires that much of their time is spent interacting with other people. Researchers observe, ask questions or even work alongside other people or researchers. Researching people is not the same as researching using journal articles. The researcher must be prepared to protect the subjects of their research and make sure they do not do anything to harm them.

 

Questionable Research

Although researchers now do everything they can to protect their research subjects and ensure that they are informed of the research being conducted, there was research conducted before human subjects had these kinds of protections and researchers had these guidelines. [2]There are several important examples of studies that would not meet the baseline level for human subject research today.

The earliest documented cases of research using human subjects are of medical vaccination trials (Rothman, 1987). One such case took place in the late 1700s, when scientist Edward Jenner exposed an 8-year-old boy to smallpox in order to identify a vaccine for the devastating disease. Medical research on human subjects continued without much law or policy intervention until the mid-1900s when, at the end of World War II, a number of Nazi doctors and scientists were put on trial for conducting human experimentation during the course of which they tortured and murdered many concentration camp inmates (Faden & Beauchamp, 1986). The trials, conducted in Nuremberg, Germany, resulted in the creation of the Nuremberg Code, a 10-point set of research principles designed to guide doctors and scientists who conduct research on human subjects. [3]

 

Medical Research

Just prior to that formulation of that code, in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service recruited several hundred poor, illiterate, and rural African American sharecroppers from Tuskegee, Alabama. The men had syphilis, for which no cure then existed, and were studied to determine its effects. In exchange for free medical care, meals, and burial insurance, 600 men agreed to participate in the study. A little more than half of the men tested positive for syphilis, and they served as the experimental group (given that the researchers could not randomly assign participants to groups, this represents a quasi-experiment). The remaining syphilis-free individuals served as the control group. However, those individuals over the course of the study who tested positive for syphilis were never informed that they had the disease.

While there was no treatment for syphilis when the study began, by 1947 penicillin was recognized as an effective treatment for the disease. Despite this, no penicillin was administered to the participants in this study, and the participants were not allowed to seek treatment at any other facilities if they continued in the study because doing so would end the research. Over the course of 40 years, many of the participants unknowingly spread syphilis to their wives (and subsequently their children born from their wives) and eventually died because they never received treatment for the disease. This study not discontinued until 1972 when the experiment was discovered by the national press (Tuskegee University, n.d.). Several observers likened it to those experiments conducted by Nazi scientists. If the subjects had been white and middle class, they said, the government would have ended the study once it learned that penicillin could cure syphilis (Jones, 1981). [4][5]

In a study that began in 1932 of syphilis among African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama, government physicians decided not to give penicillin to the men after it was found that this drug would cure syphilis.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

 

A participant in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study receives an injection.

 

The hope of many of us is that this research ended here but there are several less well known examples of this same research project replicated in different context. The Guatemala syphilis studies, for example, were conducted on mental patients, sex workers, prisoners and soldiers between 1946 and 1948. In this case, the researchers actually infected some subjects with the disease to study its effects. The doctors either used prostitutes who were already infected or the subjects were infected through a shot of the disease. The subjects ranged in age from children to seniors and many of the subjects died over the course of the research. The United States did not apologize for the research until 2010.[6]

 

Social Research

Fortunately, most sociological research does not have this potential for causing death or serious illness but medical scientists are not the only researchers who have conducted questionable research on humans. In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram (1974) conducted a series of experiments designed to understand obedience to authority in which he tricked subjects into believing they were administering an electric shock to other subjects. In fact, the shocks weren’t real at all, but some, though not many, of Milgram’s research participants experienced extreme emotional distress after the experiment (Ogden, 2008). A reaction of emotional distress is understandable. The realization that one is willing to administer painful shocks to another human being just because someone who looks authoritative has told you to do so might indeed be traumatizing— even if you later learn that the shocks weren’t real.

Around the same time that Milgram conducted his experiments, sociology graduate student Laud Humphreys (1970) was collecting data for his dissertation research on the tearoom trade, the practice of men engaging in anonymous sexual encounters in public restrooms. Humphreys wished to understand who these men were and why they participated in the trade. To conduct his research, Humphreys offered to serve as a “watch queen,” the person who keeps an eye out for police and gets the benefit of being able to watch the sexual encounters, in a local park restroom where the tearoom trade was known to occur. What Humphreys did not do was identify himself as a researcher to his research subjects. Instead, he watched his subjects for several months, getting to know several of them, learning more about the tearoom trade practice and, without the knowledge of his research subjects, jotting down their license plate numbers as they pulled into or out of the parking lot near the restroom. Some time after participating as a watch queen, with the help of several insiders who had access to motor vehicle registration information, Humphreys used those license plate numbers to obtain the names and home addresses of his research subjects. Then, disguised as a public health researcher, Humphreys visited his subjects in their homes and interviewed them about their lives and their health. Humphreys’s research dispelled a good number of myths and stereotypes about the tearoom trade and its participants. He learned, for example, that over half of his subjects were married to women and many of them did not identify as gay or bisexual.

Once Humphreys’s work became public, the result was some major controversy at his home university (e.g., the chancellor tried to have his degree revoked), among sociologists in general, and among members of the public, as it raised public concerns about the purpose and conduct of sociological research. In addition, the Washington Post journalist Nicholas von Hoffman wrote the following warning about “sociological snoopers”:

We’re so preoccupied with defending our privacy against insurance investigators, dope sleuths, counterespionage men, divorce detectives and credit checkers, that we overlook the social scientists behind the hunting blinds who’re also peeping into what we thought were our most private and secret lives. But they are there, studying us, taking notes, getting to know us, as indifferent as everybody else to the feeling that to be a complete human involves having an aspect of ourselves that’s unknown. (von Hoffman, 2008)

 

In the original version of his report, Humphreys defended the ethics of his actions. In 2008, years after Humphreys’s death, his book was reprinted with the addition of a retrospect on the ethical implications of his work. In his written reflections on his research and the fallout from it, Humphreys maintained that his tearoom observations constituted ethical research on the grounds that those interactions occurred in public places. But Humphreys added that he would conduct the second part of his research differently. Rather than trace license numbers and interview unwitting tearoom participants in their homes under the guise of public health research, Humphreys instead would spend more time in the field and work to cultivate a pool of informants. Those informants would know that he was a researcher and would be able to fully consent to being interviewed. In the end, Humphreys concluded that “there is no reason to believe that any research subjects have suffered because of my efforts, or that the resultant demystification of impersonal sex has harmed society” (p. 231).

These and other studies (Reverby, 2009) led to increasing public awareness of and concern about research on human subjects. In 1974, the US Congress enacted the National Research Act, which created the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The commission produced The Belmont Report, a document outlining basic ethical principles for research on human subjects (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979). The National Research Act also required that all institutions receiving federal support establish institutional review boards (IRBs) to protect the rights of human research subjects (1974). Since that time, many organizations that do not receive federal support but where research is conducted have also established review boards to evaluate the ethics of the research that they conduct. [7]

As all these examples of ethical issues demonstrate, it is not always easy to decide whether a particular research project is ethically justifiable. Partly for this reason, colleges and universities have committees[8] that review proposed human-subject research to ensure that federal guidelines are followed as research conducted on human subjects can vary dramatically from those of research conducted on nonliving entities. The US Department of Health and Human Services defines a human subject as “a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research obtains (1) data through intervention or interaction with the individual, or (2) identifiable private information” (1993).[9]

In some states, human subjects also include deceased individuals and human fetal materials. Nonhuman research subjects, on the other hand, are objects or entities that investigators manipulate or analyze in the process of conducting research. In sociology, nonhuman research subjects typically include sources such as newspapers, historical documents, advertisements, television shows, buildings, and even garbage (to name just a few) that are analyzed for unobtrusive research projects.

 

Institutional Review Board

Unsurprisingly, research on human subjects is regulated much more heavily than research on nonhuman subjects. Any experiment involving the participation of human subjects is governed by extensive, strict guidelines designed to ensure that the experiment does not result in harm. Any research institution that receives federal support for research involving human participants must have access to an institutional review board (IRB). The IRB is a committee of individuals often made up of members of the institution’s administration, scientists, and community members. The purpose of the IRB is to review proposals for research that involves human participants. The IRB reviews these proposals with the principles mentioned above in mind, and generally, approval from the IRB is required in order for the experiment to proceed.[10]

IRBs are tasked with ensuring that the rights and welfare of human research subjects will be protected at all institutions, including universities, hospitals, nonprofit research institutions, and other organizations, that receive federal support for research.

IRBs typically consist of members from a variety of disciplines, such as sociology, economics, education, social work, and communications (to name a few). Most IRBs also include representatives from the community in which they reside. For example, representatives from nearby prisons, hospitals, or treatment centers might sit on the IRBs of university campuses near them. The diversity of membership helps to ensure that the many and complex ethical issues that may arise from human subjects research will be considered fully and by a knowledgeable and experienced panel. Investigators conducting research on human subjects are required to submit proposals outlining their research plans to IRBs for review and approval prior to beginning their research. Even students who conduct research on human subjects must have their proposed work reviewed and approved by the IRB before beginning any research (though, on some campuses, some exceptions are made for classroom projects that will not be shared outside of the classroom).

It may surprise you to hear that IRBs are not always popular or appreciated by researchers. In some cases, the concern is that IRBs are most well versed in reviewing biomedical and experimental research, neither of which is particularly common within sociology. Much sociological research, especially qualitative research, is open ended in nature, a fact that can be problematic for IRBs. The members of IRBs often want to know in advance exactly who will be observed, where, when, and for how long, whether and how they will be approached, exactly what questions they will be asked, and what predictions the researcher has for her or his findings. Providing this level of detail for a yearlong participant observation within an activist group of 200-plus members, for example, would be extraordinarily frustrating for the researcher in the best case and most likely would prove to be impossible. Of course, IRBs do not intend to have researchers avoid studying controversial topics or avoid using certain methodologically sound data collection techniques, but unfortunately, that is sometimes the result. The solution is not to do away with review boards, which serve a necessary and important function, but instead to help educate IRB members about the variety of social scientific research methods and topics covered by sociologists and other social scientists. [11]

 

Consent

An institution’s IRB requires several components in any experiment it approves. For one, each participant must sign an informed consent form before they can participate in the experiment.[12] A norm of voluntary participation is presumed in all sociological research projects. In other words, we cannot force anyone to participate in our research without that person’s knowledge or consent. Researchers must therefore design procedures to obtain subjects’ informed consent to participate in their research. Informed consent is defined as a subject’s voluntary agreement to participate in research based on a full understanding of the research and of the possible risks and benefits involved. Although it sounds simple, ensuring that one has actually obtained informed consent is a much more complex process than you might initially presume. [13]

An informed consent form summarizes the aims of the study and the possible risks of being a subject. If researchers want to study minors (under age 18), they normally must obtain a signature from a parent or legal guardian. Informed consent is a requirement for most “real” research these days, but ethical issues arise over the meaning of “consent.” For consent to have any real meaning, potential research subjects must have the right to refuse to take part in a research project without any penalties whatsoever. Otherwise, they may feel pressured to participate in the project without really wanting to do so. This result would violate what “consent” is supposed to mean in the research process. Sometimes subjects are promised a small reward (often between $5 and $20) for taking part in a research project, but they are still utterly free to refuse to do so, and this small inducement is not considered to be undue pressure to participate.[14]

The first requirement for appropriate informed consent is that, in giving their informed consent, subjects may neither waive nor even appear to waive any of their legal rights. Subjects also cannot release a researcher, his or her sponsor, or institution from any legal liability should something go wrong during the course of their participation in the research (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2009). Because sociological research does not typically involve asking subjects to place themselves at risk of physical harm by, for example, taking untested drugs or consenting to new medical procedures, sociological researchers do not often worry about potential liability associated with their research projects. However, their research may involve other types of risks. For example, what if a sociological researcher fails to sufficiently conceal the identity of a subject who admits to participating in a local swinger’s club, enjoying a little sadomasochistic activity now and again or violating her marriage vows? While the law may not have been broken in any of these cases, the subject’s social standing, marriage, custody rights, or employment could be jeopardized were any of these tidbits to become public. This example might seem rather extreme, but the point remains: even sociologists conduct research that could come with some very real legal ramifications.

In addition to sharing some details about the purpose of the research, the researcher must also share possible benefits of participation and possible risks associated with participating in that research with their subjects.  It is also important for the researcher tot describe how they will protect subjects’ identities, how and for how long any data collected will be stored, and whom to contact for additional information about the study or about subjects’ rights. All this information is typically shared in the informed consent form. In some cases, subjects are asked to sign the consent form indicating that they have read it and fully understand its contents. In other cases, subjects are simply provided a copy of the consent form and researchers are responsible for making sure that subjects have read and understand the form before proceeding with any kind of data collection.

Informed consent becomes a more difficult problem when a researcher wants to include certain vulnerable populations in a study. These subjects are members of vulnerable populations because they may be at risk of experiencing undue influence or coercion. The rules for consent are more stringent for vulnerable populations. Minors, for example, must have the consent of a legal guardian in order to participate in research. In some cases, the minors themselves are also asked to participate in the consent process by signing an assent form, a special, age-appropriate consent form designed specifically for them. [15]

Another clear example of such a problem is when a study involves prisoners. When prisoners are asked to be interviewed or to fill out a questionnaire, they certainly can refuse to do so, but they may feel pressured to participate. They realize that if they do participate, they may be more likely to be seen as a “model” prisoner, which helps them win “good time” that reduces their sentence or helps them win a release decision from a parole board. Conversely, if they refuse to participate, they not only lose these advantages but also may be seen as a bit of a troublemaker and earn extra scrutiny from prison guards.[16] Concern about the vulnerability of these subjects comes from the very real possibility that prisoners and parolees could perceive that they will receive some highly desired reward, such as early release, if they participate in research.

Beyond the protection of members of vulnerable populations, researchers also have concern that they may be underrepresented in research, and even denied potential benefits of participation in research, specifically because of concerns about their ability to consent. So on the one hand, researchers must take extra care to ensure that their procedures for obtaining consent from vulnerable populations are not coercive and that the procedures for receiving approval to conduct research on these groups may be more rigorous than that for nonvulnerable populations. On the other hand, researchers must work to avoid excluding members of vulnerable populations from participation simply on the grounds that they are vulnerable or that obtaining their consent may be more complex. While there is no easy solution to this double-edged sword, an awareness of the potential concerns associated with research on vulnerable populations is important for identifying whatever solution is most appropriate for a specific case. [17]

While the informed consent form should be as honest as possible in describing exactly what participants will be doing, sometimes deception is necessary to prevent participants’ knowledge of the exact research question from affecting the results of the study. Deception involves purposely misleading experiment participants in order to maintain the integrity of the experiment, but not to the point where the deception could be considered harmful. For example, if we are interested in how our opinion of someone is affected by their attire, we might use deception in describing the experiment to prevent that knowledge from affecting participants’ responses. In cases where deception is involved, participants must receive a full debriefing upon conclusion of the study—complete, honest information about the purpose of the experiment, how the data collected will be used, the reasons why deception was necessary, and information about how to obtain additional information about the study.[18]

 

Privacy and Confidentiality

One of the most important ethical guidelines in sociological and other human-subject research concerns privacy and confidentiality. When they do research, sociologists should protect the privacy and confidentiality of their subjects. When a survey is used, the data must be coded (prepared for computer analysis) anonymously, and in no way should it be possible for any answers to be connected with the respondent who gave them. In field research, anonymity must also be maintained, and aliases or pseudonyms (fake names) should normally be used when the researcher reports what she or he has been observing.

Some sociologists consider the privacy and confidentiality of subjects so important that they have risked imprisonment when they have refused to violate confidentiality. In one example, a graduate student named Mario Brajuha had been doing participant observation as a restaurant waiter on Long Island, New York, when the restaurant burned down. When the police suspected arson, they asked Brajuha to turn over his field notes. When Brajuha refused, he was threatened with imprisonment. Meanwhile, two suspects in the case also demanded his field notes for their legal defense, but again Brajuha refused. The controversy ended 2 years later when the suspects died and the prosecutor’s office abandoned its effort to obtain the notes (Brajuha & Hallowell, 1986).

In another case, a graduate student named Rik Scarce refused to turn over his field notes on radical environmentalists after one of the groups he was studying vandalized a university laboratory. Scarce was jailed for contempt of court when he refused to tell a grand jury what he had learned about the group and spent several months behind bars (Monaghan, 1993).[19]

The requirement of informed consent becomes an ethical issue when prisoners are studied, because prisoners may feel pressured to participate in the study.

Kim Daram – prison – CC BY-NC 2.0.

 

In protecting subjects’ identities, researchers typically promise to maintain either the anonymity or the confidentiality of their research subjects. Anonymity is the more stringent of the two. When a researcher promises anonymity to participants, not even the researcher is able to link participants’ data with their identities. Anonymity may be impossible for some sociological researchers to promise because several of the modes of data collection that sociologists employ, such as participant observation and face-to-face interviewing, require that researchers know the identities of their research participants. In these cases, a researcher should be able to at least promise confidentiality to participants. Offering confidentiality means that some identifying information on one’s subjects is known and may be kept, but only the researcher can link participants with their data and he or she promises not to do so publicly. Sometimes it is not even possible to promise that a subject’s confidentiality will be maintained. This is the case if data are collected in public or in the presence of other research participants in the course of a group interview, for example.

Protecting research participants’ identities is not always a simple prospect, especially for those conducting research on stigmatized groups or illegal behaviors. Sociologist Scott DeMuth learned that all too well when conducting his dissertation research on a group of animal rights activists. As a participant observer, DeMuth knew the identities of his research subjects. So when some of his research subjects vandalized facilities and removed animals from several research labs at the University of Iowa, a grand jury called on Mr. DeMuth to reveal the identities of the participants in the raid. When DeMuth refused to do so, he was jailed briefly and then charged with conspiracy to commit animal enterprise terrorism and cause damage to the animal enterprise (Jaschik, 2009).

Publicly, DeMuth’s case raised many of the same questions as Laud Humphreys’ work 40 years earlier. What do social scientists owe the public? Is DeMuth, by protecting his research subjects, harming those whose labs were vandalized? Is he harming the taxpayers who funded those labs? Or is it more important that DeMuth emphasize what he owes his research subjects, who were told their identities would be protected? DeMuth’s case also sparked controversy among academics, some of whom thought that as an academic himself, DeMuth should have been more sympathetic to the plight of the faculty and students who lost years of research as a result of the attack on their labs. Many others stood by DeMuth, arguing that the personal and academic freedom of scholars must be protected whether we support their research topics and subjects or not. DeMuth’s academic adviser even created a new group, Scholars for Academic Justice (http://sajumn.wordpress.com), to support DeMuth and other academics who face persecution or prosecution as a result of the research they conduct. What do you think? Should DeMuth have revealed the identities of his research subjects? Why or why not?[20]

As a researcher, the protection of your human subjects should always be at the forefront of any work you do. As a student, conducting research as a part of a class, you are generally exempt from completing the entire IRB process. However, if your rested will contribute to generalizable knowledge or be published outside of the classroom, you may need to consider some or all of this process. Most importantly, protection of human subjects should be practiced whether it not it is required. Although the formal aspects may be unnecessary, showing respect for your subjects by treating them humanely is never optional.[21]

 

Chapter Summary

• Social science researchers must always protect their home subjects
• This is done through ensuring that subjects are clear about the research and any benefits and risks involved
• Vulnerable populations require additional protections
• All colleges and universities but have mechanisms to monitor and approve research before it is conducted on human subjects
• Research that has not had to follow these strict guidelines has had psychological and physiology effects on subjects

 

Questions

1. What is the name of the group of people tasked with monitoring his subjects research?
2. What have been adverse effects of studies that haven’t filled e the proper procedure?
3. How can a researcher project their subjects?
4. Thinking about research you have conducted or read about, in what ways might it have had an effect on the researchers subjects?
5. What kind of research might not have risks for the subject?

 

Key Terms

• Code of ethics
• Value neutrality
• Institutional Review Board
• Informed consent
• Deception
• Debriefing
• Anonymity
• Confidentiality

 

 

References

 

American Sociological Association. (2008). Code of ethics and policies and procedures of the ASA committee on professional ethics. Washington, DC: ASA.

Brajuha, M., & Hallowell, L. (1986). Legal intrusion and the politics of fieldwork: The impact of the Brajuha case. Urban Life, 14, 454–478.

Faden, R. R., & Beauchamp, T. L. (1986). A history and theory of informed consent. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Humphreys, L. (1970). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places. London, UK: Duckworth.

Humphreys, L. (1970). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places. London, UK: Duckworth.

Humphreys, L. (1975). Teamroom trade: Impersonal sex in public places. Chicago, IL: Aldine.

Humphreys, L. (2008). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places, enlarged edition with a retrospect on ethical issues. New Brunswick, NJ: AldineTransaction.

Humphreys, L. (2008). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places, enlarged edition with a retrospect on ethical issues. New Brunswick, NJ: AldineTransaction.

Jaschik, S. (2009, December 4). Protecting his sources. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/12/04/demuth

Jones, J. H. (1981). Bad blood: The Tuskegee syphilis experiment. New York, NY: Free Press.

Lenza, M. (2004). Controversies surrounding Laud Humphreys’ tearoom trade: An unsettling example of politics and power in methodological critiques. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 24, 20–31. See also Nardi, P. M. (1995). “The breastplate of righteousness”: Twentyfive years after Laud Humphreys’ Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places. Journal of Homosexuality, 30, 1–10.

Lenza, M. (2004). Controversies surrounding Laud Humphreys’ tearoom trade: An unsettling example of politics and power in methodological critiques. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 24, 20–31.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Monaghan, P. (1993). Sociologist is jailed for refusing to testify about research subject. Chronicle of Higher Education, 39, 10.

Nardi, P. M. (1995). “The breastplate of righteousness”: Twentyfive years after Laud Humphreys’ Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places. Journal of Homosexuality, 30, 1–10. Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org 29

National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (1979). The Belmont report: Ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research. Retrieved from http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/belmont.html

National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (1979). The Belmont report: Ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research. Retrieved from http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/belmont.html

National Research Act of 1974, Pub. L. no. 93-348 Stat 88. (1974). The act can be read at http://history.nih.gov/research/downloads/PL93-348.pdf.

National Research Act of 1974, Pub. L. no. 93-348 Stat 88. (1974). The act can be read at http://history.nih.gov/research/downloads/PL93-348.pdf

Ogden, R. (2008). Harm. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 379–380). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Ogden, R. (2008). Harm. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 379–380). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Reverby, S. M. (2009). Examining Tuskegee: The infamous syphilis study and its legacy. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Rothman, D. J. (1987). Ethics and human experimentation. The New England Journal of Medicine, 317, 1195–1199.

Rothman, D. J. (1987). Ethics and human experimentation. The New England Journal of Medicine, 317, 1195–1199.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org 29

The US Department of Health and Human Services’ guidelines on vulnerable populations can be read at http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/policy/populations.

US Department of Health and Human Services. (1993). Institutional review board guidebook glossary. Retrieved from http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/archive/irb/irb_glossary.htm

US Department of Health and Human Services. (1993). Institutional review board guidebook glossary. Retrieved from http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/archive/irb/irb_glossary.htm

US Department of Health and Human Services. (2009). Code of federal regulations (45 CFR 46). The full set of requirements for informed consent can be read at http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html#46.116.

Von Hoffman, N. (1970, January 30). Sociological snoopers. The Washington Post, p. B1.

Von Hoffman, N. (1970, January 30). Sociological snoopers. The Washington Post, p. B1.

Warwick, D. P. (1973). Tearoom trade: Means and ends in social research. Hastings Center Studies, 1, 39–49. See also Warwick, D. P. (1982). Types of harm in social research. In T. L. Beauchamp, R. R. Faden, R. J. Wallace Jr., & L. Walters (Eds.), Ethical issues in social science research. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Warwick, D. P. (1973). Tearoom trade: Means and ends in social research. Hastings Center Studies, 1, 39–49. See also Warwick, D. P. (1982). Types of harm in social research. In T. L. Beauchamp, R. R. Faden, R. J. Wallace Jr., & L. Walters (Eds.), Ethical issues in social science research. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

[1] OpenStax, Introduction to Sociology 2e. OpenStax CNX. Mar 20, 2019 http://cnx.org/contents/02040312-72c8-441e-a685-20e9333f3e1d@12.4.

[2] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

[3] The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee.

[4] OpenStax, Psychology. OpenStax CNX. Mar 6, 2019 http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@10.16.

[5] Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

[6] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

[7] The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

[8] Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

[9] The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

[10] OpenStax, Psychology. OpenStax CNX. Mar 6, 2019 http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@10.16.

[11] The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

[12] OpenStax, Psychology. OpenStax CNX. Mar 6, 2019 http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@10.16.

[13] The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

[14] Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

[15] The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

[16] Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

[17] The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

[18] OpenStax, Psychology. OpenStax CNX. Mar 6, 2019 http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@10.16.

[19] Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

[20] The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

[21] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph