Hi On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Cheri Budzynski wrote: > We had a discussion on our Human Subjects Review Board about the ethics > of obtaining information on a survey that is not pertinent to the study. > One person argued that it was a design issue and we should not be asking > people to remove questions from their surveys (the debate was related to > questions about race/ethnicity and gender). I thought that this > information was only appropriate if the study specifically addressed > issues of gender or race/ethnicity and that questions not pertinent to > the study should not be included. I am pretty sure that this is an > ethical guideline to which psychologists adhere. Can anyone recommend a > website or document that specifically addresses ethic in survey > construction/research?
I won't answer from an ethics perspectives, but this is not a healthy attitude from a scientific perspective. (1) It virtually eliminates the possibility of serendipitous findings involving variables not explicitly identified as target variables. (2) It makes it impossible to describe completely the participants in the study (e.g., #males/females, # of different ethnic backgrounds). (3) Related to 2, it precludes many kinds of meta-analyses that might be performed to explicate discrepancies across studies. I would actually think that science would benefit from an almost completely standardized collection of demographic information about participants in studies. Best wishes Jim ============================================================================ James M. Clark (204) 786-9757 Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax University of Winnipeg 4L05D Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark ============================================================================ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
