Abstract
Psychology departments often require undergraduates to participate in faculty and graduate research as part of their course or face a penalty. Involuntary participant pools (human subject pools) in which students are compulsorily enrolled are objectively coercive. Students have less autonomy than other research participants because they face a costly alternative task or the penalties that accompany failure to meet a course requirement if they choose not to participate. By contrast, other research participants are free to refuse consent without cost or penalty. Some researchers claim that the educational value of participation justifies the requirement. They treat coercion as a cost that can be outweighed by the benefits to students. This paper argues that such an approach is flawed because coercion is not like other costs and that educational value is inherently low relative to personal study or classroom time. The unethical nature of involuntary participation is best demonstrated with an opportunity cost analysis. This shows that students are forced to sacrifice higher value alternatives that they have paid to do and undertake a lower value activity that principally benefits others. Faculty have a conflict of interest as they are the beneficiaries of student coercion in their role as researchers and responsible for student achievement in their role as teachers. Voluntary participant pools can resolve this conflict but at the cost of reducing the supply of participants. A change in departmental research conduct is required to restore the autonomy of students who are competent adults and not legitimate subjects of paternalism when it comes to research participation.
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UCLA, for example, records an ‘incomplete’ for Psychology 10 that becomes a ‘fail’ if students do not complete their hours the following quarter. https://www.psych.ucla.edu/undergrads/subject-pool-experiment-participation/sona-instructions-for-undergraduate-participants. Accessed 22 May 2020.
The University of Illinois, for example, deprives withdrawing students of the whole credit for studies under an hour and awards prorated credit in studies longer than an hour. https://psychology.illinois.edu/system/files/inline-files/Rights%20and%20Responsibilites%20for%20Student%20Participants-08.06.19.pdf. Accessed 22 May 2020.
The argument would run somewhat differently if students did not pay for tuition, but they would still subsidize faculty research. It would be tempting to offer research participation as an activity students on scholarships could undertake in exchange for free education. However, a contractual obligation to take part in research or some alternative to it, would still be susceptible to the opportunity cost problem and breach students’ autonomy. I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising this question.
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Walker, R. The Opportunity Cost of Compulsory Research Participation: Why Psychology Departments Should Abolish Involuntary Participant Pools. Sci Eng Ethics 26, 2835–2847 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00232-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00232-2