Ethical Minefield Navigation in Nursing Educational Research

What is Ethical Minefield Navigation in Nursing Educational Research. To navigate the complex ethical landscape of nursing education, it is critical to teach and foster key skills such as ethical decision-making, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and cultural competency.

Researcher’s Guide to Balancing Truth-Seeking with Human Dignity Ethics of Social Research for The Ethical Minefield Navigation in Nursing Educational Research

Ethical decision-making models and frameworks, such as the ANA Code of Ethics, are often used to guide students through complex patient situations. Key strategies include emphasizing moral imagination, mentoring, fostering collaboration with interdisciplinary teams and ethics committees, and staying informed about emerging ethical challenges, such as the impact of AI and data privacy on healthcare.

Foundation of Ethical Research

Social scientists generally have a responsibility not only to their profession in their search for knowledge and quest for truth, but also for the subjects they depend on for their work. Whatever the specific nature of their work, social researchers must consider the effects of the research on participants, and act in such a way as to preserve their dignity as human beings. Such is ethical behavior.

What Does It Mean to Be Ethical in Research?

Indeed, ethics has been defined as: a matter of principled sensitivity to the rights of others.

Balancing Act: Truth vs. Human Dignity

Being ethical limits the choices we can make in the pursuit of truth. Ethics say that while truth is good, respect for human dignity is better, even if, in the extreme case, the respect of human nature leaves one ignorant of human nature. (Cavan, 1977:810) Kimmel (1988) has pointed out that when attempting to describe ethical issues, it is important we remember to recognize that the distinction between ethical and unethical behavior is not dichotomous, even though the normative code of prescribed (‘ought’) and proscribed (‘ought not’) behaviors, as represented by the ethical standards of a profession, seem to imply that it is.

Judgements about whether behavior conflicts with professional values lie on a continuum that ranges from the clearly ethical to the clearly unethical. The point to be borne in mind is that ethical principles are not absolute though some maintain that they are as we shall see shortly but must be interpreted in the light of the research context and of other values at stake.

Key Factors That Demand Ethical Consideration

It is perhaps worthwhile at this point to pause and remind us that a considerable amount of research does not cause pain or indignity to the participants, that self-esteem is not necessarily undermined or confidence betrayed, and that the social scientist may only infrequently be confronted with an unresolvable ethical di lemma. Where research is ethically sensitive, however, many factors may need to be considered, and these may vary from situation to situation.

By way of example, we identify a selection of such variables, the prior consideration of which will perhaps reduce the number of problems subsequently faced by the researcher. Thus, the age of those being researched; whether the subject matter of the research is a sensitive area; whether the aims of the research are in any way subversive (vis-à-vis subjects, teachers, or institution); the extent to which the researcher and researched can participate and collaborate in planning the research; how the data are to be processed, interpreted, and used (and Laing (1967:53) offers an interesting, cautionary view of data where he writes that they are ‘not so much given as taken out of a constantly elusive matrix of happenings.

We should speak of capital rather than data’; the dissemination of results; and guarantees of confidentiality are just some of the parameters that can form the basis of, to use Aronson and Carlsmith’s phrase, a specification of democratic ethics. Readers will no doubt be able to develop their own schema from the ideas and concepts expressed in this post as well as from their own widening experience as researchers.

Great Divide: Two Major Sources of Tension

We noted earlier that the question of ethics in research is a highly complex subject. This complexity stems from numerous sources of tension. We consider two of the most important.

Scientific Inquiry vs. Individual Rights

The first, as expressed by Aronson and Carlsmith (1969), is the tension that exists between two sets of related values held by society: a belief in the value of free scientific inquiry in pursuit of truth and knowledge; and a belief in the dignity of individuals and their right to those considerations that follow from it.

It is this polarity that we referred to earlier as the costs/benefits ratio and by which ‘greater consideration must be given to the risks to physical, psychological, humane, proprietary and cultural values than to the potential contribution of research to knowledge’ (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 1981), i.e. the issue of ‘non-maleficence’ (where no harm befalls the subjects).

When researchers are confronted with this dilemma (and it is likely to occur much less in education than in social psychology or medicine), it is generally considered that they resolve it in a manner that avoids the extremes of, on the one hand, giving up the idea of research and, on the other, ignoring the rights of the subjects. At all times, the welfare of subjects should be kept in mind (though this has not always been the case, as we shall see), even if it involves compromising the impact of the research.

Researchers should never lose sight of the obligations they owe to those who are helping and should constantly be on the alert for alternative techniques should the ones they are employing at the time prove controversial (see the penultimate paragraph in this post on personal codes of ethical practice).

Indeed, this polarity between the research and the researched is reflected in the principles of the American Psychological Association who, as Zechmeister and Shaughnessy (1992) show, attempt to strike a balance between the rights of investigators to seek an understanding of human behavior, and the rights and welfare of individuals who participate in the research. In the final reckoning, the decision to go ahead with a research project rests on a subjective evaluation of the costs both to the individual and society.

Absolutists vs. Relativists: The Philosophical Battle

The second source of tension in this context is that generated by the competing absolutist and relativist positions. The absolutist view holds that clear, set principles should guide the researchers in their work and that these should determine what ought and what ought not to be done. To have taken a wholly absolutist stance, for example, in the case of the Stanford Prison Experiment where the researchers studied interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison, would have meant that the experiment should not have taken place at all or that it should have been terminated well before the sixth day. Zimbardo has stated the ethical position:

To search for those conditions which justify experiments that induce human suffering is not an appropriate enterprise to anyone who believes in the absolute ethical principle that human life is sacred and must not in any way be knowingly demeaned physically or mentally by experimental interventions. From such a position it is even reasonable to maintain that no research should be conducted in psychology or medicine, which violates the biological or psychological integrity of any human being regardless of the benefits that might, or even would, accrue to society at large. (Zimbardo, 1984)

By this absolute principle, the Stanford Prison Experiment must be regarded as unethical because the participants suffered considerably. Those who hold a relativist position, by contrast to this, would argue that there can be no absolute guidelines and that ethical considerations will arise from the very nature of the research being pursued at the time: situation determines behavior. There are some contexts, however, where neither the absolutist nor the relativist position is clear cut.

Writing of the application of the principle of informed consent with respect to life history studies, Plummer says: Both sides have a weakness. If, for instance, as the absolutists usually insist, there should be informed consent, it may leave relatively privileged groups under-researched (since they will say ‘no’) and under-privileged groups over-researched (they have nothing to lose and say ‘yes’ in hope). If the individual conscience is the guide, as the relativists insist, the door is wide open for the unscrupulous—even immoral—researcher. (Plummer, 1983)

He suggests that broad guidelines laid down by professional bodies which offer the researcher room for personal ethical choice are a way out of the problem. Raffe et al. (1989) have identified other sources of tension which arose in their own research: that between different ethical principles, for instance, and between groups and other individuals or groups. Before we consider the problems set by ethical dilemmas, we touch upon one or two other tripwires disclosed by empirical research.

Learning from the Trenches: Real-World Ethical Challenges

Whatever the ethical stance one assumes and no matter what forethought one brings to bear on one’s work, there will always be unknown, unforeseen problems and difficulties lying in wait (Kimmel, 1988). It may therefore be of assistance to readers if we dip into the literature and identify some of these.

The Gratitude Gap

Baumrind (1964), for example, warns of the possible failure on the researchers’ part to perceive a positive indebtedness to their subjects for their services, perhaps, she suggests, because the detachment which investigators bring to their task prevents appreciation of subjects as individuals. This kind of omission can be averted if the experimenters are prepared to spend a few minutes with subjects afterwards to thank them for their participation, answer their questions, reassure them that they did well, and generally talk to them for a time.

If the research involves subjects in a failure experience, isolation, or loss of self-esteem, for example, researchers must ensure that the subjects do not leave the situation more humiliated, insecure, and alienated than when they arrived. From the subject’s point of view, procedures which involve loss of dignity, injury to self-esteem, or affect trust in rational authority are probably most harmful in the long run and may require the most carefully organized ways of recompensing the subject in some way if the researcher chooses to carry on with such methods. With particularly sensitive areas, participants need to be fully informed of the dangers of serious after-effects.

The Milgram Effect: When Research Damages Self-Esteem

There is reason to believe that at least some of the obedient subjects in Milgram’s (1963) experiments came away from the experience with a lower self-esteem, having to live with the realization that they were willing to yield destructive authority to the point of inflicting extreme pain on a fellow human being (Kelman, 1967). It follows that researchers need to reflect attitudes of compassion, respect, gratitude and common sense without being too effusive. Subjects clearly have a right to expect that the researchers with whom they are interacting have some concern for the welfare of participants.

Further, the subject’s sensibilities need also to be considered when the researcher comes to write up the research. There have been notorious instances in the research literature when even experienced researchers have shown scant regard for subjects’ feelings at the report stage.

Recognition and Acknowledgment

A related and not insignificant issue concerns the formal recognition of those who have assisted in the investigation, if such is the case. This means that whatever form the written account takes, be it a report, article, or course thesis, and no matter the readership for which it is intended, its authors must acknowledge and thank all who helped in the research, even to the extent of identifying by name those whose contribution was significant. This can be done in a foreword, introduction or footnote. All this is really a question of commonsensical ethics, an approach that will go a long way in enabling researchers to overcome many of the challenges that beset them.

Common Ethical Pitfalls (And How to Avoid Them)

Ethical problems in educational research can often result from thoughtlessness, oversight, or taking matters for granted. For example, are searcher may be completely oblivious to attend ant moral issues and perceive his or her work in an ethical void (not to be compared with the situation where a researcher knowingly treats moral issues as if they do not matter, with, as it were, met ethical disdain’). Again, researchers engaged in sponsored research may feel they do not have to deal with ethical issues, believing their sponsors to have them in hand.

Likewise, each researcher in a collaborative venture may take it for granted, wrongly, that colleagues have the relevant ethical questions in mind; consequently, appropriate precautions go by default. A student whose research is part of a course requirement and who is motivated wholly by self-interest, or the academic researchers with professional advancement in mind, may overlook the ‘ought’s’ and ‘ought not’s’.

There is nothing wrong with either motivation providing that ethical issues are borne in mind. Finally, researchers should beware of adopting modus operandi in which correct ethical procedure unwittingly becomes a victim of convenience.

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