There are three ethical standards that are regularly cited when considering potential harm for research participants. Kathleen McKinney’s”Ethical Issues in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” effectively explains each standard.

Protection from Harm

“In research with human participants, we are obligated to protect them from physical, emotional, and social harm. More specifically, any potential harm must be clearly outweighed by the benefits to the participants or to society as a whole. This is clearly a subjective decision to make, thus, harm is also one of the areas an IRB [or REB] will consider. We must also protect participants’ privacy and refrain from sanctioning anyone who declines to participate or who ends his/her participation before the study is completed (thus, this ethical standard of harm also relates back to the standards of privacy and consent).” (McKinney, n.d.)

This concern for protection includes harm to the participants, the researcher, and the institution approving the research.  Although there might occasionally be some risk involved in approved research, the benefits must outweigh the costs in order for a project to be justified and approved. Currently, ethical standards must consider any potential physical, psychological, emotional, behavioral, economic, and social harm that might occur when participating in the research.

Although SoTL work does not pose the same risk of explicit harm as the types of research that led to The Belmont Report, any research involving human participants must begin with careful consideration of potential risks of harm, and studies involving vulnerable populations, such as students, will often require special precautions. Examples of potential harm in SoTL research could include the following:

• Damage to the self-esteem of a student through reflection on personal performance or comparison of performance to other students (emotional harm, or what MacLean and Poole call a “social penalty” [2010, p. 7]).
• A proposed intervention for a classroom following a quasi-experimental design that provides a learning opportunity for one course section but not another, which may result in a stratification in grade distribution (social harm).

Minimal Risk versus Above Minimal Risk

There is an important distinction of minimal to above minimal risk when obtaining ethics approval for a study.  Research has minimal risk if the potential for harm by participating in the study is no more than what participants would encounter in their everyday lives (TCPS 2, 2014).  In relation to SoTL research, minimal risk would likely be associated with projects such as the following:

• Research that is done to inform the institution about efficacy of teaching and learning privately. For example, a study based on your analysis of the work students regularly do for your course, thereby making no change in the learning experience of the students

• Conducting a study on the effectiveness of learning tools. For example, assessing students’ use of textbooks for your class

 

 

A study considered above minimal risk entails a potential for harm to occur that is outside of what one would occur in everyday life. “Harm” is anything that may negatively affect an individual’s welfare. Harm can be physical, behavioral, emotional, mental, economic, or social. Studies that involve deception or coercion will be considered above minimal risk by default.

 

• A study that involves using deception. For example, REMINDER: Nancy talk to Cindy!

Informed Consent

“…the people participating in our research have the right to give or refuse to give consent to participate. In order to give meaningful consent, they must be adequately informed about the nature of, risks of, purpose of, privacy of, consequences of, etc. the study.” (McKinney, n.d.)

Student participants, as a vulnerable population given the relationship between students and the professor and the institution, may be at risk of feeling forced to participate in SoTL research. They may think that participation could directly or indirectly affect their success in a class.

To protect them from this coercion (real or perceived), it must be made clear to student participants that they have the rights to give or refuse consent, and to withdraw from a study at any time–without penalty. They also must be adequately informed of the purpose of the research, potential risks, and benefits from their participation. This process reduces the risk of harm by ensuring that participants fully understand what they’re being asked to do.

Informed consent can be obtained in a number of ways and will usually be determined by a project’s design. A written statement with a signature from students is the most common way of obtaining informed consent. Online surveys can also be preceded by the consent form indicating that continuation with the survey indicates consent.  In some cases, an oral statement read aloud with an oral agreement may be possible.  A template for consent forms is available from the University of Calgary’s CFREB website (scroll down to “CFREB Consent Form Template” under “CFREB Forms & Templates”).

Right to Privacy

“Participants in our research have the right to expect that their data or responses or behavior in the study be private. Data can be anonymous, where no one can connect the specific person to their data (e.g., self-administered questionnaires with no names or code numbers or identifying questions), or confidential, where at least one person can connect a specific person to their responses or actions (e.g., an interview study), but the researchers promise to keep the data private. Aggregating the data also helps maintain privacy as does destroying raw data when it is no longer needed.”  (McKinney, n.d.)

Participants’ right to privacy refers to keeping anonymous all identifying information of the participants. The right to privacy is critical in cases where participants have provided sensitive information that could link back to them personally. To ensure their identities remain anonymous, researchers can

• assign pseudonyms to keep identity confidential,
• store data in a secure location (e.g., password protected computer, locked file cabinet) only accessible by the researcher(s),
• aggregate the data (e.g., useful in a large-scale survey), and/or
• destroy data upon completion of the research.

The level of protection of privacy needs to be included in the informed consent statement, so participants are aware of what will happen to information they provide before they agree to participate in the study. This process reduces the risk of harm by ensuring that participants are confident in the privacy of their participation.

Some examples of SoTL research in which students may want their identities to be private would include information on their study habits, their personal grades, and the content or quality of their work.

 

 

 

For more information, see “An Introduction to Ethical Considerations for Novices to Research in Teaching and Learning in Canada“(2010) by Mark MacLean and Gary Poole.

 

Text box?  Here is information about special ethical considerations when researching University of Calgary courses.

 

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