Research Ethics

Rachel Aldred Ethical and Political Issues in Contemporary Research Relationships Sociology 2008 42: 887-903. This article discusses how ethical and political issues affect contemporary research relationships. It focuses on the responsibilities of researchers studying organizations and elites, and the discussion draws upon the author's experience of researching NHS primary health care services. The article reviews the spread of `ethical guidelines' from medical to social research. Such guidelines primarily address ethical problems relating to individual researcher-researched relationships. Sociologists have criticized the application of medically based guidelines to social research, while often accepting an ethical framework based on the researcher-researched dyad. But this limited conception of ethical responsibilities leaves complex organizational power hierarchies and their effects undertheorized. Researchers may then be vulnerable and lack guidance where organizational loyalties and market mechanisms have undermined the traditional supports of academic independence and professionalism. Sociologists could learn from critical medical scientists' responses to some related ethical dilemmas, as some medical researchers have experienced these issues more acutely and for longer.

Adam Hedgecoe Research Ethics Review and the Sociological Research Relationship Sociology 2008 42: 873-886. For years, sociologists working in other countries or UK-based medical sociologists have complained about the effects of having to seek approval from a research ethics committee (REC) or its equivalent before starting work. With the arrival of the ESRC's Research Ethics Framework, concern about ethics review has expanded to sociologists working on a wider range of topics. This article uses ethnographic data from a study of UK RECs to examine how these bodies assess applications from social scientists, particularly those proposing qualitative research (which opponents claim is given an especially hard time by such committees). These data challenge the idea that RECs are somehow ideologically biased against qualitative research and that they cannot give an adequate assessment of applications from sociologists and other social scientists. The article concludes by suggesting sociologists' time would be better spent studying the institutional nature of the university RECs stimulated by the ESRC.

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