Abstract
There are many things that faculty have to consider as we begin to plan a course: the learning goals and objectives and how they fit with the program’s goals and objectives; the type of students who will be enrolled and their sociological background; what kinds of assignments and other learning activities will assist our students in reaching those goals and objectives; what type of readings/videos and other instructional supports will students be offered; how all of this “plays” on your institution’s learning management system, if you are using one; are you using the principles of universal design in order to make all materials accessible to all students?—and the list could go on! In this brief note, I want to suggest that there is another pedagogical concern that many of us need to factor in as we design a course that will include students gathering research: how to teach your students about the ethics of conducting research, including how to follow your campus’s institutional review board (IRB) process. No institution’s IRB process will be exactly like another’s, but there are some common pedagogical issues that all of us need to ponder.
Why Have Students Conduct Research?
Obviously, students need to understand the scientific method, and one of the best ways to learn it is by conducting research for themselves. As a discipline, we believe that [d]epartments should infuse the empirical base of sociology throughout the curriculum, giving students exposure to research opportunities across several methodological traditions, providing repeated experiences in posing sociological questions, developing theoretical explanations, and bringing data to bear on them. (McKinney et al. 2004:ii).
Still, think about these questions for a bit: What specific learning goals and objectives will be met by students doing research, either individually or collectively? Why do they need to conduct research in this class (as opposed to others)? What specifically do you want them to learn from conducting research? Are there other ways to ensure that they learn that sociological content? How integral to the course is the research assignment? You may need to spend some time and energy prior to and during the course in order to implement such a research assignment successfully—so consider the educational outcomes, the time and stress it add for your students and for yourself as you design the assignment. Given all this, do you still want to have students conduct their own sociological research projects?
Once you have made that decision, then think about the sociological background of your students: What prior knowledge about research, and particularly, research ethics, will they be bringing to your course? The less that they know, the more time you will need to devote to teaching about why ethics are needed, what our discipline’s code of ethics is, and the rationale behind our norms. Give the class enough time to master the information and apply it to some case studies (e.g., Sweet 1999; Teixeira-Poit, Cameron, and Schulman 2011) before beginning their own research projects. This will reduce (but not eliminate) some ethical “bumps” to come. I would suggest that you be sure to include content about ethics and proper research behavior on your tests, too, because what is covered on tests can symbolize to students what is “important.”
Know Your Institution’s Policies About Student Research
IRBs, while primarily following federal laws and policies, are also highly individualistic. So learn your IRB’s procedures, because they are likely to be unique to that institution. But here are issues to learn answers to before assigning students to conduct research.
What Constitutes Research on Your Campus?
According to the Code of Federal Regulations for human subjects research (45 CFR 46), [r]esearch means a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge. Activities which meet this definition constitute research . . . whether or not they are conducted or supported under a program which is considered research for other purposes. For example, some demonstration and service programs may include research activities. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1974)
However, many institutions have constructed their own practices, which may or may not follow the federal rules precisely. Some schools, for instance, require all student research involving human subjects to go through the IRB process and be approved—whether or not it leads to publication or is aimed at advancing the general knowledge base. If this is your institution’s process, then you will need to discover the average time an application is in process before the IRB makes a decision. That information must inform the pacing of course content, when you schedule research project due dates, and so on.
Classroom projects that engage students in research activities involving human subjects are an integral component of many sociology courses. It is common for IRBs to grant approval to instructors to undertake such projects involving human subjects that pose little or no risk to participants, particularly in research methods courses where students often design and administer questionnaires and interviews and/or work with other methods that bring them in contact with individuals. In these cases, the IRB will often grant a general approval for a classroom-based assignment as the research activities are typically designed with the objective of mastering course material and are not intended to create generalizable knowledge. This is also often the case for group projects or projects done by the entire class. At some college and universities, these kinds of classroom-based research activities are explicitly designated as exempt from IRB approval. Either way, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with your institution’s IRB policies for student research and/or talk with the IRB chair and/or administrator far in advance of the course to sort through these procedural matters. Some IRBs have published guidelines concerning their policies for student research that address these questions.
To the extent that either you or your students need to obtain IRB approval, you need to understand what that means in your social context. Given the way you have designed your research project, will each student need to submit a separate IRB application (at my institution, that would mean completing a 14-plus-page form)? Or can you as the instructor of record submit one application that addresses your learning goals for having students do research, the types of data collection you will allow students to do in your course, and how you will have students learn about the ethical norms in sociology and just attach a short paragraph about each student’s project? Then if the IRB has concerns about particular student’s project, it can contact you and the student to seek more information.
Other institutions require only a subset of student research projects go through the IRB approval process. For these schools, primarily undergraduate theses, honors research projects, and graduate theses and dissertations are required to seek IRB approval, but other student research (conducted in order to practice how to do research) is not. A rule of thumb is that if you want to have your students engage in individual research projects involving human subjects that can potentially lead to generalizable knowledge, then you can anticipate that your IRB will hold students to the same high standards and formal IRB review process that it would any researcher.
While it may be difficult to understand how any particular IRB defines what falls under its purview, it is up to those of us who are requiring students to conduct research to learn the institutional norms that prevail on our campus. And don’t forget—should you wish to gather data on your student research projects for a research article—say, to submit to Teaching Sociology!—then you would need to go through your institution’s IRB process.
If all students’ individual research must be submitted to your institution’s IRB for review, the good news is that most of their proposals likely will receive an “exempt” determination. The IRB does not actually approve an exempt study but instead makes the determination that the project meets at least one of the federal exempt categories criteria as specified in 45 CFR 46, for example, the study involves “research conducted in established or commonly accepted educational settings, involving normal educational practice” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1974). This means that the study is exempt from IRB monitoring and some federal regulations, and students will receive permission to begin to collect data rather quickly after submitting the IRB application. They are not exempt from the ethical obligations of human subjects research, however.
But what happens to the student whose application is not given an exempt status; perhaps the application is even required to go before the full IRB for a vote? At many institutions, IRBs meet monthly, so this might set a student back six or even eight weeks. Will you create a policy that students can study only research questions that would earn them an exempt IRB status? Or will you change deadlines on assignments if a student’s application is awaiting review for weeks? Will late assignments—due to a delay in IRB approval—cost the student points? Does this give the student a possible advantage on these assignments (e.g., he or she might have heard you talk about them in class, for instance, after you have graded the others)? Or is it more likely that the delay will hurt a student’s grade, in that the student will more likely have to rush through the next steps of the project before the end of the term? Will an IRB delay be grounds for an Incomplete grade, should it come to that? As faculty we need to think through these possible pedagogical outcomes before finalizing our syllabus. It is better to create policies on these matters in advance of their actually happening, so that you don’t have to invent a policy on the fly, with five minutes left in a class, with the entire class eager to hear what you will say!
What Type of Ethics Training Is Required for Student Researchers at Your Institution?
Many IRBs require researchers to take and successfully pass the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative at the University of Miami program (commonly called “CITI”; University of Miami 2014). What is your school’s policy about CITI and student researchers? Is it required for all students conducting research on human subjects? If so, are there any restrictions on how students take the CITI training? Could you take your class to a computer lab and do it together, for instance? If students must take it individually, you probably want to prepare them, showing them how to log in, where to find the modules they need to take, and so on. And caution them to schedule sufficient time for the CITI training: My students often report that they were surprised at how long it took to complete all the required modules for our research projects. If they need to print out their certificate and/or e-mail it to the IRB, be sure to remind them of that frequently.
What Ethical Training Do Our Students Need?
Regardless of how your students have reached the point of doing research in your class—whether they or you obtained IRB approval or an exempt determination—you are expected to make sure your students understand the ethical obligations as they relate to human subjects research in carrying out any assignment in your class.
Instructors need to be aware that the coverage of our discipline’s ethical norms in textbooks for Introduction to Sociology courses is often quite minimal. Chambliss and Eglitis (2014:44) only mention ethical norms in the research chapter in three paragraphs and a short summary table, which is not quite one page of the book. Ballantine and Roberts’s (2014:39) section on ethics in the research chapter is approximately the same length. Henslin’s (2015) textbook has almost twice the length of Chambliss and Eglitis (2014) and Ballantine and Roberts (2014) but does not list the ethical norms and instead focuses on two cases, those of Mario Brajuha and Laud Humphreys. So professors will likely want to find other resources to supplement these textbooks.
Our students deserve more ethical training that what is in these textbooks. While classic studies (e.g., Humphreys, Milgram, and Zimbardo) are important for our students to learn about, we need to realize that the social contexts in which they find themselves—and therefore that they may want to study—have changed considerably compared to when some of us went to graduate school and received our training on ethics. So as faculty, we need to be introducing them to the ethical issues involved in studying electronic communities, such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram, just as much as the ethical issues involved in mailed questionnaires. For example, what constitutes informed consent when conducting online research (Curtis 2014; Nunan and Yenicioglu 2013; Varnhagen et al. 2005) might be a topic students will need to grapple with for their own research. For other faculty who primarily teach in applied sociology programs, a different set of ethical concerns might need to be addressed, including the impact on community partners or organizations of research conducted. Many of us might need to retool our own ethical knowledge in order to meet our students’ needs.
At some point in the conversations about ethics—especially after the CITI training—some students might express frustration, often asking, “Why do we have to know all this stuff anyway?” or “Are these rules really necessary? How often does something bad happen, anyway?” These questions, while they might seem argumentative, can be wonderful teaching opportunities. It could be the perfect time for a role-play, where instead of being the researcher, some students occupy other possible statuses. How does it feel to be a research subject who is treated unethically by a sociologist or an organization that was studied and is beaten up in the press after a confusing newspaper article based on your research? Have students read about sociologists whose research has led into legal troubles, such as Rik Scarce (2005), and have class discussion about what students might have done in his situation. Some students might become the IRB members at his school; others, his department head; still others could take the status of members of the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Committee on Professional Ethics and become experts on the ASA’s Code of Ethics, while a few more students could become Scarce as he makes his ethical choices, guided by all these experts.
Unexpected Events
We strongly recommend that faculty create a policy that students must alert you to an unexpected event (i.e., any breach of research protocol but especially one that might create harm for a research subject) within hours of the incident. Students are not always able to discern what might have or could in the future cause harm, so I require students to report all breaches of protocol to me within 24 hours. Then the student and I meet face-to-face the next workday. Once I understand what happened, I usually contact the IRB administrator first and talk it through. If deemed necessary, the student will be required to complete an incident report. The most frequent example of protocol breaches that have happened in my classes are when a student forgets to discuss the need for, and then to request that a research subject sign, an informed consent document before conducting an interview.
Here again, some pedagogical concerns arise. Should a student who broke research protocol—especially about not gaining informed consent—lose points on the assignment? Or should point loss accrue only if the violation caused real harm or potential harm to a research subject? If students know they would lose points, would they be less likely to report an unexpected event? And would that be a good thing? There are lots of pedagogical issues involved, and as the faculty member, you need to think through this possibility before the class begins so that you have a policy already established. Then talk about it frequently in class and help students to understand why you created the policy the way that it is.
Conclusion
Having students conduct research can be a wonderful learning experience, meshing academic content with the messiness of actual research. But faculty need to consider a host of pedagogical and policy items as they construct their course, in order to ensure the best possible learning experience for students.