“I Wouldn’t Trust the Parents To ‘Do No Harm’ To a Queer Kid”: Rethinking Parental Permission Requirements for Youth Participation in Social Science Research

2020 ◽  
pp. 155626462098313
Author(s):  
Jennifer Patrice Sims ◽  
Cassandra Nolen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Institutional Review Boards ◽  
Parental Consent ◽  
Lgbtq Youth ◽  
Standard Requirement ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
Institutional Review ◽  
Youth Research

Obtaining parental consent for youth to participate in research is a standard requirement in the United States. However, the assumption that involving parents is the best way to protect youth research participants is untenable for some populations. This study draws on interviews with 19 LGBTQ+ mixed-race participants to examine lay views of parental consent requirements for LGBTQ+ youth research participants. Qualitative data analysis found concerns about potentially outing LGBTQ+ youth to intolerant parents. Interviewees also asserted that adolescents aged 16 and older are competent enough and should have the autonomy to consent themselves. Finally, interviewees raised several methodological concerns regarding the biased research that may result from parental consent requirements. We agree with others that U.S. Institutional Review Boards should end uncritical requirements for parental consent for older adolescents and should routinize the use and study of alternative protective measures.

scholarly journals Regulating Bodies: Children and Sexual Violence

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (16) ◽  
pp. 1956-1979
Author(s):  
Heather R. Hlavka
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Institutional Review Boards ◽  
Child Sexual Assault ◽  
Institutional Review ◽  
Epistemic Violence ◽  
Children And Childhood

The interdisciplinary silences on sexual violence and the omission of children and youth from social science research speak volumes of the power of the child as a flexible, cultural signifier. In this article, I argue that dominant frameworks of children and childhood make child sexual assault a discursive impossibility for most young people. The epistemic violence of silencing matters, and it is these erasures that are fundamental to understanding violence and power. I argue it is paramount for feminist researchers to call attention to the undermining qualities of Institutional Review Boards that act as gatekeepers of representation and voice.

Human Subjects Protection and Large-N Research: When Exempt is Non-Exempt and Research is Non-Research

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (03) ◽  
pp. 477-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell A. Seligson
Keyword(s):  
Human Subjects ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Medical Community ◽  
Institutional Review Boards ◽  
The Road ◽  
Institutional Review ◽  
Protection Of Human Subjects

Social scientists are well aware of the unintended consequences of public policies. The protection of human subjects regulations, which emerged in response to a serious problem in the medical community, provides an ideal example of such unintended consequences; to paraphrase an old aphorism, “the road to bureaucratic hell is paved with well-intentioned public policies.” In this essay I will seek to make three points. First, the protection of human subjects by federal regulation was long overdue. Second, this benefit to society has, in its application, ignored another widely accepted regulatory principle, namely that the costs of regulation should not outweigh its benefits; a combination of “bureaucratic creep” and litigation phobia has resulted in intrusive and counterproductive regulation of social science research, such that the cure has become worse than the disease. Third, ironically, because of institutional review boards' definition of what is and what is not research, the protection of human subjects is denied to subjects who actually could be at risk.

scholarly journals Protecting Human Research Participants, IRBs, and Political Science Redux: Editor's Introduction

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (03) ◽  
pp. 475-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J-P. Hauck
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Regulatory System ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Institutional Review Boards ◽  
Institutional Review ◽  
Course Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Assistant Director

In the 1990s I testified before a National Science Foundation (NSF) panel headed by Cora Marrett, then assistant director for the NSF Directorate for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. The subject of the panel's inquiry, and this issue's symposium, was social science research and the federally mandated but decentralized human subjects protection program and its principal actors, institutional review boards (IRBs). My testimony addressed the ways in which the regulatory system ill-fit and ill-served political science research. IRBs had expanded their mission to include all research, not just research funded by the federal government, enhancing their scope of authority while slowing the timeliness of reviews. Similarly, and with the same result, IRBs were evaluating secondary research as well as primary research. Although the federal legislation provided for a nuanced assessment of risk, the distinction between potentially risk-laden research necessitating a full IRB review and research posing minimal or no risk that could be either exempted or given expedited review was disappearing. The length of the review process threatened the beginning or completion of course work and degree programs. IRBs were judging the merits of research projects rather than the risks involved. This trend was especially problematic because representation on many IRBs was skewed toward biological and behavioral scientists often unfamiliar with the methods and fields of political science and the other social sciences. And the list went on.

scholarly journals Reporting all results efficiently: A RARE proposal to open up the file drawer

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (52) ◽  
pp. e2106178118
Author(s):  
David D. Laitin ◽  
Edward Miguel ◽  
Ala’ Alrababa’h ◽  
Aleksandar Bogdanoski ◽  
Sean Grant ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Integrated System ◽  
Institutional Review Boards ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Institutional Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
Empirical Social Science ◽  
Peer Reviewers

While the social sciences have made impressive progress in adopting transparent research practices that facilitate verification, replication, and reuse of materials, the problem of publication bias persists. Bias on the part of peer reviewers and journal editors, as well as the use of outdated research practices by authors, continues to skew literature toward statistically significant effects, many of which may be false positives. To mitigate this bias, we propose a framework to enable authors to report all results efficiently (RARE), with an initial focus on experimental and other prospective empirical social science research that utilizes public study registries. This framework depicts an integrated system that leverages the capacities of existing infrastructure in the form of public registries, institutional review boards, journals, and granting agencies, as well as investigators themselves, to efficiently incentivize full reporting and thereby, improve confidence in social science findings. In addition to increasing access to the results of scientific endeavors, a well-coordinated research ecosystem can prevent scholars from wasting time investigating the same questions in ways that have not worked in the past and reduce wasted funds on the part of granting agencies.

MRI Research Proposals Involving Child Subjects: Concerns Hindering Research Ethics Boards from Approving Them and a Checklist to Help Evaluate Them

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. DEBORAH SHILOFF ◽  
BRYAN MAGWOOD ◽  
KRISZTINA L. MALISZA
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
The United States ◽  
Institutional Review Boards ◽  
Scientific Review ◽  
Initial Development ◽  
Institutional Review ◽  
Research Ethics Boards ◽  
A Current

The process of research is often lengthy and can be extremely arduous. It may take many years to proceed from the initial development of an idea through to the comparison of the new modalities against a current gold-standard practice. Each step along the way involves rigorous scientific review, where protocols are scrutinized by multiple scientists not only in the specific field at hand but related fields as well. In addition to scientific review, most countries require a further review by a panel that will specifically address the ethics of the proposed research. In Canada, those panels are referred to as Research Ethics Boards (REB), with the United States counterparts known as Institutional Review Boards (IRB).

Making Nano Matter

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 604-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Simakova
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
University Campus ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Societal Relevance ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Interpretive Flexibility

The article examines science-policy conversations mediated by social science in attempts to govern, or set up terms for, scientific research. The production of social science research accounts about science faces challenges in the domains of emerging technosciences, such as nano. Constructing notions of success and failure, participants in science actively engage in the interpretation of policy notions, such as the societal relevance of their research. Industrial engagement is one of the prominent themes both in policy renditions of governable science, and in the participants’ attempts to achieve societally relevant research, often oriented into the future. How do we, as researchers, go about collecting, recording, and analyzing such future stories? I examine a series of recent interviews conducted in a number of US universities, and in particular at a university campus on the West Coast of the United States. The research engages participants through interviews, which can be understood as occasions for testing the interpretive flexibility of nano as “good” scientific practice and of what counts as societal relevance, under what circumstances and in view of what kind of audiences.

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