The Process of Ethical Decision-Making: Experts vs Novices

Abstract

As one approach to examining the way ethical decisions are made, we asked experts (i.e., ethicists, regulatory officials, and experienced researchers) and novices (i.e., inexperienced graduate students) to review a set of scenarios that depict some important ethical tensions in research. The method employed was “protocol analysis,” a talk-aloud technique pioneered by cognitive scientists for the analysis of expert performance. The participants were asked to verbalize their normally unexpressed thought processes as they responded to the scenarios, and to make recommendations for courses of action. We found that experts spent more time working through the decision-making process than novices and also raised substantially more concerns than novices. Differences also exist among the three groups of experts.

Appendices

Appendix A: The Four Scenarios Used in the Protocol Analysis

Oscar

Oscar Reynaldo, a post doc, was coding data for Dr. Mason, the PI for the grant that is funding Oscar’s post doc. In the process of coding, Oscar identified a code that was ambiguous, and without discussing the matter with Mason, refined the code. Subsequently, Dr. Mason wrote a paper focusing on the refined code and gave a copy to Oscar to review. Oscar made a number of suggestions, and seeing that the variable he refined was the central idea of the paper, asked for authorship credit. Mason thinks that acknowledgment of Oscar’s contribution in a footnote was sufficient, since Mason brought in the basic ideas and analyzed the data. However, he puts Oscar off and explains the situation to you, a professional colleague. What should you tell Mason?

Burke

Jim Burke is a research assistant on a federal grant for which Professor Neil Rassmussen is principal investigator. Through the grant, Jim hired two of his graduate student roommates, Rebecca and Tony, to administer surveys in university classes and enter the data into a spreadsheet. They will be paid $5 for each completed survey. As Burke is preparing slides for a presentation that Rassmussen is scheduled to give, he notes very high correlations among a number of variables. Burke checks the data and finds two problems. Rebecca’s surveys consisted of 100 surveys that appeared to have been entered twice into the data set. Tony’s surveys appeared to contain 70 unique surveys along with 30 surveys that appeared to be nearly identical copies of some of his 70 unique surveys. When confronted by Burke, Tony offers to delete the extra 30 surveys. If you were Burke, what would you do?

Natasha

Natasha is a graduate student interested in studying the role of alcohol consumption on risk assessment and decision-making in acquaintance rape situations. She proposes to recruit female college students to listen to an audio recording of an interaction between a man and a woman that becomes increasingly coercive and ends with a rape. Each subject will be instructed to indicate at what point in the recording the man’s efforts to “persuade” his female companion to have sex becomes unacceptable. In addition, each subject will be asked what action(s) she would recommend the woman take. Prior to the actual research, all of the subjects will consume two, six-ounce drinks. All of the participants will be instructed that their drinks contain vodka, when in fact only half contain significant amounts. Natasha presented her proposal to her advisor and asks for suggestions. If you were Natasha’s advisor, what would you do?

Christine

Dr. Christine Buzinski, a psychology professor, has developed a child safety curriculum to teach 2nd and 3rd grade children how to react to propositions from strangers. The curriculum includes a series of news videos about children who have been abducted and either raped or killed by their abductor. In addition, she developed an assessment procedure that includes confederates posing as strangers and propositioning children outside of school (e.g., walking home or on the playground). She plans to present the curriculum in a local school (the principal is a close friend of Christine’s). The children who will receive the curriculum are to be told that they can participate in the project if their parents sign a consent form. The consent form explains the project to the parents, including the use of the confederates, and asks them not to say anything to their children. Those children whose parents sign the form get a day at the local zoo. Finally, after the project is completed, data on how each child performs (including the child’s response to the confederate) will be provided to the parents, along with a brochure for an additional safety training program provided by a consulting firm that Christine has started. You are a university professor serving on the school’s parent advisory council. The principal asks the council to review this project. What would you advise?

Appendix B: Moral Reasoning Codes and Definitions (From the Coding Training Materials)

• 1. Emotional/intuitive: score this if the interviewee indicates an emotional or value reaction to an event (e.g., “that’s just wrong, no way that I’d do that,” “Yuk!”)

• 2. Labeling/categorizing actions and events: “That is a conflict of interest,” “that could be a violation of confidentiality,” “that would be a mistake.” If the labeling explicitly mentions an emotional or value aspect, score as #1

• 3. Appeals to risk/benefit ratio: (e.g., “I just don’t see what they are testing in this scenario;” “where is the benefit to offset the risk?”) Score only if the ratio of risks to benefits is mentioned or implied. If only one item is noted - either the risk or the benefit - score under #4 - appeals to consequences.

• 4. Appeals to consequences: Score if the interviewee refers to the consequence of a particular act or the anticipated consequence of a course of action that is under consideration. Also score if only a risk or only a benefit is mentioned - note that a risk benefit ratio is scored under #3.

• 5. Appeals to moral/ethical value of a behavior: Score for appeals to broad moral and ethical values (e.g., beneficence, justice, integrity)

• 6. Appeals to rules and regulations: Score this if the interviewee mentions specific rules and regulations - note there is a judgment call separating #5 and #6. #5 is for appeals to broad moral values (e.g., “I don’t think that people should lie.”) whereas #6 requires reference to a more specific ethical or regulatory guideline- (e.g., “I know that APA Ethics require researchers to be honest in reporting research results.”)

• 7. Personal virtue: Score for references to moral character of the actors, often to the intention of an action—(e.g., “I know that Professor X would want to give credit for work that his students have done.”)

• 8. Appeals to precedent and analogous cases: Score this if the interviewee refers to prior cases for guidance or to analogous cases (even if the case is fictional)

• 9. Appeals to authority: Score for appeals to God, parents, mentors, and institutions and committees such as the HSIRB or NIH or NSF

• 10. Appeals to logical analysis: (e.g., “if X is true, then this should not occur, or doesn’t follow”.) Note the inclusion of conditional statements (if… then…) as a common indicator of a logical analysis.

• 11. Role obligation: Score appeals to a professional or social role (e.g., “If I were the researcher, I’d be obligated to …”; “if I were this person’s parent, I’d be concerned about ….”) Do not score this as a role obligation if 1) the person was merely perspective-taking without referring to a professional or social role—“if I had been in this situation, I would have …” or 2) offering advice but without identifying a specific role (“e.g., Burke should not have hired his roommate”). For contrast, this would have been scored as a role obligation if the comment had clearly identified a role (e.g., “a researcher should not hire his or her roommates to do a technical job”).

• 12. Appeals to social norms: (e.g., “that’s the way most people in my lab would handle this.”) - note the sense of a normative response.