Deck 5: The Ethics and Politics of Social Work Research

Question 1

The PRIMARY ethical research issue raised by the Milgram study was

A) the willingness of people to harm others when "following orders" required it.
B) the administering of electrical shocks.
C) the effects of the methods on the experimental subjects.
D) the effects of the methods on the learner.
E) the examination of obedience as a topic for study.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Which of the following questions should be answered in an informed consenorm?

A) What will you be asked to do if you participate in this research study?
B) What are the possible discomforts and risks involved in the study?
C)What are the possible benefits of the study?
D) All of the above.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Institutional Review Boards [IRBs]:

A) emerged in response to unethical research experiments.
B) aim to protect the rights and interests of research participants.
C) may continue to oversee studies after they are implemented.
D) all of the above

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Concealing the nature of the study from those being observed violates the norm of voluntary participation.

Question 5

Science is never influenced by political matters.

Question 6

What ethical guidelines is/are violated in the following study? A child therapist thinks the new,untested psychotherapy she recently developed is more effective than physician-prescribed medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.To research the effectiveness of her therapy,she tells parents that the therapy replaces the need for the medications and then provides the therapy to half of her clients,without telling parents about the study or which treatment group their child is in.

A) voluntary participation and informed consent.
B) no harm to the participant.
C) deceiving subjects.
D) all of the above.
E) none of the above.

Question 7

Which of the following does NOT harm subjects?

A) having them face aspects of themselves that they do not normally consider.
B) asking them to reveal their unpopular attitudes.
C) asking them to identify their deviant behavior.
D) allowing them to easily identify themselves in the final report.
E) All of the above may harm respondents.

Question 8

Ethical obligations to one's colleagues in the scientific community

A) require that technical shortcomings and failures of the study be revealed.
B) allow the researcher to determine whether or not to report negative findings.
C) Encourage the researcher to always describe the findings as the product of a carefully preplanned analytical strategy.
D) a and b only are correct.
E) b and c only are correct.

Question 9

The norm of voluntary participation threatens the social research goal of generalizability.

Question 10

Which of the following statements is/are true about the dilemma involving the right to receive services versus the responsibility to evaluate service effectiveness?

A) This is not really a dilemma, since no conflict in values is involved.
B) All professionals agree that services should never be delayed, even if their effects have not yet been verified.
C)No professionals question the ethics of providing untested services, as long as we have good intentions.
D) All of the above are true.
E) None of the above is true.

Question 11

When names are removed from questionnaires and are replaced with identification numbers so that only the researcher can later link a response to a name,the researcher should tell the respondent that the information is

A) anonymous.
B) confidential.
C) anonymous and confidential.
D) harmless.
E) none of the above.

Question 12

Certificates of confidentiality are used because police or other authorities mighorce disclosure of participants' identities in research data.

Question 13

Which of the following statements is/are true about IRB procedures or requirements?

A) All IRBs use the same amounts of required forms.
B) All research must undergo a full review; there are no exemptions for expedited reviews.
C) All IRBs are expected to require education on the protection of human research participants for each research assistant in studies involving human subjects.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 14

Which of the following questions should be answered in an informed consenorm?

A) Do you have to participate?
B) How will your privacy and the confidentiality of your research records be protected?
C)Will the researchers benefirom your participation in this study?
D) All of the above.

Question 15

Which of the following statements is/are true about IRB panelists or support staff?

A) Most IRB staff members try to help investigators obtain timely approval for their projects.
B) Some panelists can occasionally be overzealous and insist on unreasonable requirements for investigators to meet.
C) They might delay approval of a research project until the investigator responds to certain concerns.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 16

Which of the following statements CORRECTLY describes the social research profession?

A) Social researchers can never be totally objective.
B) Social researchers are humanly subjective.
C) Different scientists can and should arrive at the same results when they employ accepted research techniques and set personal values and views aside.
D) Social researchers attempt to be value-free.
E) all of the above.

Question 17

Which of the following statements is/are true about the Tuskegee syphilis study?

A) It was stopped shortly after it began.
B) Despite the controversy surrounding it, ethicists agreed that its benefits justified its risks.
C) A social worker was instrumental in getting it stopped.
D) Physicians were NOT involved in it.

Question 18

Ethical issues are distinguished from political issues in research in that

A) ethics deals more with the substance of research.
B) politics deals more with the methods of research.
C) formal codes of accepted political conduct are not comparable to the codes of ethical conduct.
D) ethics deals more with the use of research.

Question 19

The quality of an ethically controversial study's research design is never considered relevant to whether that study can be justified.

Question 20

The ethics as well as the politics of research hinge on ideological points of view.

Question 21

Identify five commonly recommended guidelines for attempting to avoid bias and insensitivity regarding gender or culture in a study.

Question 22

Choose an ethical issue presented in this chapter,create a research situation in which this issue could arise,and tell how you would handle it.

Question 23

Explain why bias and insensitivity regarding gender and culture in a study's methodology can be relevant to the ethics of the study.

Question 24

If researchers find that a new intervention is not effective,it is ethically acceptable to refrain from reporting the findings.

Question 25

Illustrate how ethics and politics affect social work research.

Question 26

Are there any situations in which a researcher is justified in deceiving subjects? Explain your answer.

Question 27

Although social work researchers rarely plan studies that could harm participants,the issue of harm to participants is still a real possibility.

Question 28

Once people are told that their participation in a research study is voluntary,there are no ethical problems.