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Researchers are facing new ethical challenges as
they conduct experiments on the World Wide Web.
BY BETH AZAR
Monitor staff
Online experiments may be helping researchers gather
more data faster than ever before, but those advantages are
coming with greater ethical challenges--threats to participant
confidentiality, questions over whether the participants
really understand what they're getting into and the
possibility that less scrupulous researchers could steal your
ideas.
Of course, the same ethical principles that bind
researchers in the real world apply in cyberspace.
Psychologists must adhere to APA's ethical principles when
conducting research with humans, and every human study must be
reviewed for ethical compliance by an institutional review
board (IRB).
But conducting research on the Internet is raising
unique concerns and technological glitches that make it more
difficult for researchers to ensure they're complying with
these guidelines and principles. For example, how do
researchers obtain valid informed consent from online
participants? They can ask prospective participants to read an
informed consent form and click a button if they agree, but
there's no way to check that they truly understand.
Debriefing study participants can be even more
challenging, researchers say. In some studies, psychologists
deceive participants about the study's premise or provide
false feedback to see how it might
affect a person's performance, but once the study is over,
they are ethically required to reveal the true nature of the
study. Is there any way to do this properly when people can
click away from your site and disappear for good in an
instant?
There are no definitive answers to such questions yet,
although several organizations have begun to consider the
issues. APA's Board of Scientific Affairs (BSA), for example,
has been discussing the ethics of Web research. And last
winter, the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) released the report, "Ethical and legal aspects
of human subjects research on the Internet," based on a June
1999 workshop and sponsored by AAAS's Scientific Freedom,
Responsibility and Law Program and the National Institutes of
Health's Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR).
Based on the report, OPRR has prepared guidelines for IRBs
that review studies conducted on the Internet (see its Web
site at grants.nih.gov/grants/oprr/oprr.htm).
Still, the area remains ethically murky for
researchers.
"It's not so much that there are new issues, but we
have to address old issues in a different way," says Juli
Espinoza, coordinator of the nonmedical IRB at Stanford
University. "That's the challenge--coming up with solutions
that are appropriate in the new environment of the
Internet."
Ethical conundrums
Of major concern to BSA and the AAAS is protecting
participants in online behavioral and social science research.
As with research in the real world, ethical concerns for
participants depend on the type of research conducted.
Usually, Internet research falls into two categories:
*
Studies that examine the psychology of people who use Web
resources and that analyze Web-based interactions by
monitoring usage patterns or assessing people's overall
experience of some Web-related resource.
*
Web sites that solicit people--actively or passively--to fill
out surveys or participate in experimental tasks that measure
psychological constructs such as memory, decision-making and
reaction time.
Both types of research must adhere to the same basic
ethical principles--protecting the privacy and autonomy of
participants without inflicting harm--but the former probably
poses the greater risk to participants if not handled
correctly. A main concern of this type of research, detailed
in the AAAS report, focuses on researchers' ability to monitor
Web-based interactions in chat rooms or support groups without
informing participants, says Jeffery Cohen, PhD, associate
director for education in OPRR's Division of Human Subject
Protections. Some researchers believe that the information
within such forums is in the public domain because the forums
are open to the public. Other researchers maintain that people
online expect--and deserve--privacy. The issue remains an
ethical question that needs answering, the AAAS report
concludes.
Web-based general psychological surveys and experiments
are likely of less risk to participants' privacy (depending,
of course, on the type of personal information collected), say
researchers. Not only are many Web studies benign, they say,
but they are voluntary and participants can drop out any time
they want to. In fact, researchers consider these studies so
innocuous that, for many, they use a passive informed consent,
with words to the effect that if people complete the study and
submit their data, they've agreed to participate. Some go a
bit further, asking people to click on a box that says, "I
consent" or having them type "Yes," or "I agree" into a
response box.
Of course, researchers have no way to know whether
participants truly understand what they're agreeing to. That's
hard enough with lab-based or face-to-face studies where
researchers have one-on-one contact with participants. And to
date there is no standardized method for collecting and
validating informed consent online. That's something
psychologists should be developing, says psychologist Kent
Norman, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University, one of the pioneers
of Web-based research.
Debriefing participants about the study and any
deception that might have occurred is even trickier and may
not be conducive to Web-based studies, say some researchers.
Researchers normally conduct debriefing face-to-face with
participants so they can handle any questions or concerns.
And, although they can easily provide a written debriefing
statement at the end of a study or through e-mail, there is no
way to guarantee that participants will actually read it. In
addition, if participants become distressed or emotional over
some aspect of the study, researchers will never know.
"You can set up careful debriefing, but participants
might not receive it," says Wesleyan University's Scott Plous,
PhD. "So, if you wanted to do active deception in an open
experiment, you'll lose control over whether people receive
the correction afterwards. It raises serious ethical
concerns."
It's also difficult to control who participates in your
study, says the University of Pennsylvania's Jonathan Baron,
PhD, who conducts online judgment and decision-making studies.
That means researchers need to design studies knowing that
children may be exposed. Baron found this particularly
challenging when he designed a study of contraception use. He
seeks to make his studies appropriate for all ages, then asks
people for their ages. They may still lie, but it's less
likely, he says, and for his research, age isn't of great
importance.
But the issue of valid data is something that may skew,
and thereby invalidate, other types of data sets, says OPRR's
Cohen. That, in itself, may put the ethics of a study at risk,
according to the AAAS report.
"Research that is invalid has no benefit," says Cohen.
"And if there's no benefit at all, any inconvenience to
subjects isn't worth it."
These are issues that IRBs are struggling with as they
begin tackling more and more applications for Web-based
research. And,
although OPRR's guidelines will help, questions on how to
address the technical issues remain to be answered. At the
moment, Stanford's nonmedical research IRB is examining every
case of Web-based research carefully, says its coordinator
Espinoza. Of concern to its members is the need to ensure
adequate informed consent and confidentiality of personal
information sent over the Internet. If the IRB deems a study's
content as "sensitive," it calls in the university's computer
experts to work with the researchers and guarantee secure
transfer of data from participants to researchers.
Indeed, having technical expertise on IRBs will be key
to ensuring that study applications get reviewed adequately,
says Cohen. But currently, such expertise is the exception,
not the rule. And, in the end, there will likely be some types
of research that IRBs deem inappropriate for the Web, says
Cohen. For example, those that deal with extremely sensitive
and emotional topics, such as rape or war experience, or those
that use heavy-duty deception.
Researchers' rights
Protecting researchers' intellectual property has also
become a more pressing concern for those conducting Web-based
experiments. Researchers who collect data on the Web expose
their methods and protocols to their colleagues long before
they publish a completed research project. They can prevent
people from accessing their data, but they can't rule out the
possibility that someone might copy their ideas.
"Right now, you post an experiment to the Web long
before any paper will be written," says psychologist Michael
Birnbaum, PhD, of California State University, Fullerton.
"Someone else can just copy it and do the whole experiment."
But, although many researchers agree that losing
control over your ideas is a greater risk with Web-based
research, the Web can also facilitate science at its best,
opening up to scrutiny the entire scientific process, from
beginning to end.
"Once you decide to do a Web experiment," says
Birnbaum, "you either restrict it by password--which would
basically be like doing the experiment in the lab without the
benefits of access to the larger Web community--or you accept
that other people can learn from it."
Copies of the AAAS report "Ethical and legal aspects of
human subjects research on the Internet" can be viewed at www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/sfrl/projects/intres/main.htm.
Researchers can access a copy of APA's ethical principles
(which do not yet specifically address Internet research) at
www.apa.org/ethics/homepage.html.
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