Guidelines for Student Research
Writing Program
University of California, Santa Barbara

April 24, 1998

Addendum, December 11, 2000
NOTICE

Beginning January 1, 2001, all faculty who are assigning field research as a part of their courses (including interviews) and all students who are conducting field research, must complete the HS Training Module located at: http://hstraining.orda.ucsb.edu before conducting the research. The login ID for all Writing Program lecturers and students is OTHR-WR-PR-041; the ID "owner" is the Writing Program Director's last name. See sample page.

Background

A primary curricular goal of most of our classes is to familiarize students with ways in which scholars in various disciplines produce knowledge through primary research. To facilitate this goal, Writing Program instructors often ask students to perform primary research; in some models of Writing 2, for example, student work in the science and social science units typically involves some sort of manipulation of or interaction with the natural or social world. Because this kind of research has the potential to harm the subject being studied (whether object, animal, or human), professional researchers are responsible for assessing and justifying the ethicality of their research before undertaking it. At UCSB, this means more specifically that

the Writing Program has the obligation to clear student research (on a program-wide basis) with the Human Subjects Committee, and

Program faculty have the obligation to educate students about relevant ethical issues and professional responsibilities before asking them to do primary research involving human or animal subjects, and insure that student research falls within acceptable ethical boundaries, as outlined below.

     To fulfill these obligations, the basic ethical principles and safeguards that guide scientific and social scientific research are outlined here so that you can pass these on to your students. Also discussed are the conditions that must be maintained for the Writing Program to continue to receive program-wide (rather than project-by-project) clearance from the Human Subjects Committee, and additional Writing Program policies designed to prevent inadvertent violations of these conditions.

Ethical Principles: Avoiding Harm to Research Subjects

     In general, assessing the ethicality of research involves balancing the potential benefits of a particular research project against the potential harm it might cause. Harm is defined by scientists and social scientists not only as physical damage or pain, but also as harm to one's reputation or emotional state (causing someone distress, embarrassment, etc.). Although professional researchers may be able to justify some risk of harm due to the potential benefits of their research, such projects are always subject to individual review by the Human Subjects Committee of the Office of Research; in no case would program-wide exemptions apply to such projects. Because student research is unlikely to produce great benefits to anyone other than the students, and because we need student research to fall within the guidelines of the program-wide exemption, efforts must be made to insure that the risk of potential harm in student research is minimal.

     In the Science unit of Writing 2 (for those models using experiments or field observation), for example, there is the potential for students to inadvertently cause harm in several ways, all of which can be avoided by setting limits on the kinds of research students perform and the ways in which they perform it. For example, while observing animal behavior is certainly acceptable, interfering with or manipulating this behavior runs a risk of harm to the animal that is likely not justified by the purpose of the research. Similarly, while it is acceptable for a student to use a friend as a subject in a consumer product testing experiment, the student must insure that the friend is not likely to experience an allergic reaction to the product being tested.

     Identifying potential harm in social science research is somewhat more difficult than in scientific research, as the determination of what might cause reputational or emotional harm requires both familiarity and empathy with the population being studied. Risk of harm can be avoided, for the most part, if students understand the importance of the following basic social science procedures which safeguard research subjects:

insuring anonymity to research subjects (except in the case of expert interviews, as discussed below), and
obtaining informed consent of subjects prior to the research.

Insuring Anonymity

Data should be collected in such a way that the identity of the subject is protected. This means that no names, telephone numbers, social security or perm numbers, or addresses should appear on survey sheets or in the research report. Interview subjects (excluding interviews with experts, which are covered in the Programmatic Clearance section below) should be given fictitious names.

Obtaining Informed Consent

Social scientists believe that a great deal of potential harm can be avoided by obtaining informed consent of research subjects prior to the research. In essence, informed consent means that subjects

are made aware that they are the subjects of a research project,
are told what the purpose of the research is,
are forewarned about what their participation will involve,
are not forced in any way to participate, and
are given the opportunity to withdraw their participation at any time.

Research practices that violate the principle of informed consent include those that involve deception and/or coercion. The two are related in the sense that if a researcher does not tell people that they are being studied (deception), the researcher is therefore forcing the people to participate (coercion). Coercion can occur by itself when people are made aware that they are the subjects of research but not given the option of non-participation. While some professional researchers do use deceptive and coercive research practices, these are currently very controversial in the social science community and researchers who engage in such practices are expected to justify them by demonstrating that their research has great social benefits. Additionally, these kinds of proposed research projects often face opposition when presented to institutional committees that approve and/or sponsor research.

Programmatic Clearance

The Writing Program has obtained a program-wide exemption from the University’s Human Subjects Committee which allows our students to pursue research without obtaining the Committee’s consent beforehand. This exemption binds us to the following guidelines regarding student research projects and informed consent:

Students may conduct research without obtaining informed consent as long as it is strictly observational research of public behavior in which the people being observed cannot be identified. Students may not conduct deceptive experiments.
Students must obtain oral informed consent when conducting survey (interview or questionnaire) research, and the participants must remain anonymous if their responses contain information which could, if known to others, harm the participants in any way (legally, financially, etc.).
Students may conduct informational interviews with experts (faculty, community leaders, business people, professionals, government and university officials, etc.) and identify them by name so long as a) the student obtains oral informed consent, and b) the content of the interview is not sensitive (i.e., will not put the respondent at risk of financial, legal, reputational, or emotional harm, as discussed above).
Students may not conduct research involving anyone under the age of 18 (except for strictly observational research in which the participants are not identified, as described above), because persons under the age of 18 are not legally considered able to give consent.

If an instructor feels a proposed student research project may not fall within these guidelines, he/she should discuss it with his/her TA supervisor, if a TA, or with the Program Director, if a lecturer.

Additional Writing Program Policies

In addition to the above, the Writing Program is putting the following additional policies in place to prevent inadvertent violation of the guidelines.

All courses:

Students are required to submit research proposals to the instructor for approval prior to beginning any primary research involving animal or human subjects.
Any questionable proposals must be cleared with the TA supervisor or Program Director.
Instructors cannot accept any student paper based on research that was not approved by the instructor beforehand.

Writing 2:
Science Unit:

Instructors must disallow any projects that interfere with the environment in any significant way or involve the destruction of property that may not belong to the student researcher.
Instructors must disallow experiments on animals. Observational studies are acceptable, but students should not interfere materially with the animal subject (e.g., handle it or subject it to forces it does not ordinarily encounter).
Where relevant, students must check if subjects/assistants may have allergic reactions to or otherwise suffer discomfort as a result of participating in the proposed experiment.
Instructors must rigorously outlaw experiments involving drugs or alcohol.

Social Science Unit:

Instructors must follow the guidelines discussed in "Programmatic Clearance" above, and remind students that "no persons under 18" includes siblings.
Students may use classmates as research participants as long as participation is voluntary and done so that the subject's identity is concealed.

Writing 1, 50, 109 series

The above Writing 2 policies also apply to these courses.
Subjects of expert interviews may be identified by name, as described above, but if the student receives any responses which he or she feels might be "sensitive" the student should call the instructor's attention to this and receive permission to make the interviewee anonymous. ("Sensitive" responses include those that, if known to others, might damage the reputation, or financial or employment status, of the interviewee, or cause emotional harm.)
Instructors must remove the names of expert interview subjects when including interview papers in course readers.

updated: 06 April 2005
created: 13 December 2000

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Guidelines for Student ResearchWriting ProgramUniversity of California, Santa Barbara

Guidelines for Student Research
Writing Program
University of California, Santa Barbara