As graduate students at Walden University, you are responsible for designing and conducting research that is ethical in all aspects. Your course text, Surviving Your Dissertation describes the critical norms for conducting ethical research: (a) Validity of the research, (b) competency of the researcher, (c) beneficence of the research, (d) special populations, and (e) informed consent (pp. 275–276). Some of these norms arose from the scrutiny of well-known controversial, unethical studies.

Your course text Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology describes three “illustrative cases” in Chapter 3: (a) Trouble in the Tearoom and (b) The Stanford Prison Experiment. You may wish to investigate both of these studies more thoroughly.

In this Discussion, you will examine the role of the IRB, your responsibilities for ensuring that you design an ethical study, and the ways in which you can reduce or eliminate ethical challenges. To prepare for this Discussion, review the Dissertation and Ethics resources listed for the week.

ASSIGNMENT: 

• Explain the role of the IRB
• Explain ethical problems you might experience if you were to conduct research on your identified topic of research.
• Analyze the impact of these potential ethical challenges. How might participants be affected, for example?
• Devise ways you might address these ethical challenges to the IRB to ensure integrity in the research process.
• Analyze the ethical values you hold that underlie your response.