CITI TRAINING

Belmont Report

Respect for Persons

  • people should be treated as autonomous agents

  • those with diminished autonomy, should be protected

Autonomy

  • People must be empowered to make decisions concerning their own actions and well-being.

  • Subjects must be fully informed about resarched

  • Those with limited autonomy or dimished understanding are to be protected.

Voluntariness

Research subjects can choose to partake in research or even withdraw from it.

Undue Influence: Authority figures (Employers and Professors) conducting research with their students.

Informed Consent

Office for Human Research protections offers the guidelines:

  1. Disclosing to potential research subjects information needed to make an informed decision

  2. facilitating the understanding of what has been disclosed

  3. promoting the voluntariness of the decision about whether or not to participate in the research

Subject needs to know their participation rights (they can withdraw at anytime), purpose of the research, any potential harms and what the subject will be expected to do.

Principles in Practice

Laud Humphreys’ Study in Tearoom Trade: impersonal sex in Public places 

  • Researched observed men meeting other men for casual sexual encounters in public restrooms.

  • Humphrey pretended to be a gay man looking for sexual encounters, allowing him to collect data on the behaviors, interactions, and demographic details of the participants without revealing his true identity.

  • After the observational part of the study, he followed up with the subjects, conducting interviews to gain deeper insights into their motivations, experiences, and the societal stigma they faced regarding their sexual encounters.

  • He changed his appearance and car he drove to avoid recognition and maintain the integrity of his study by reducing the likelihood of personal biases influencing the data collection.

  • Violated subjects’ autonomy - subjects were not informed about the study, and did not choose to participate.