The eligibility of Public Administration research for ethics review: a case study of two international peer-reviewed journals
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852315585949 |
| Author | Jacobus S. Wessels,Retha G. Visagie |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2017, Vol. 83(1S) 156–176
The eligibility of Public
! The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315585949
ethics review: a case study
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
of two international
peer-reviewed journals
Jacobus S. Wessels
University of South Africa, South Africa
Retha G. Visagie
University of South Africa, South Africa
Abstract
This article reports on research aimed at assessing why Public Administration research
is eligible for research ethics review or not through a quantitative content analysis of
two international peer-reviewed journals. Through a comprehensive literature review
on research integrity, research ethics and human subject protection regulations, the
reasons, convictions and conditions for ethics review were identified and combined into
a conceptual framework for the purpose of the content analysis. The study revealed
that 60% of the articles reported on research involving human participants directly or
indirectly. An interesting observation was the lack of reporting on ethical considerations
in general and specifically in the research design of those articles with the potential to
harm human subjects. It is recommended that higher education institutions hosting
researchers in Public Administration, as well as peer-reviewed journals, should instil
the awareness and sensitivity for research ethics among researchers.
Points for practitioners
The study on which this article is based reports on the qualifying reasons, convictions
and conditions for ethics review in Public Administration research. Consequently, the
article proposes a conceptual framework that could be used by Public Administration
researchers and ethics review committees to assess whether research is eligible for
ethics review or not.
Corresponding author:
Jacobus S. Wessels, Department of Public Administration, University of South Africa, AJH van der Walt
Building 4-82, PO Box 392, UNISA 0003, South Africa.
Email: wessejs@unisa.ac.za
Wessels and Visagie
157
Keywords
Belmont
Report,
beneficence,
human
participants,
non-maleficence,
Public
Administration, research ethics, research ethics review, research integrity, risk, trust
Introduction
‘How did we ever get into this mess?’ asked Robert Dingwall in the title of his
article outlining the history of ethics regulation in the social sciences (Dingwall,
2012: 3). His article was published five years after Feeley (2007: 764) qualified his
own support for a concern about ethics regulation in social science research as
follows: ‘we must distinguish between some problematic forms of biomedical
research, on the one hand, and the bulk of social science fieldwork, on the
other’. With regard to Public Administration research, Jordan (2014: 87) argues
for reducing the level of Institutional Review Board (IRB) ‘attention necessary for
review of public administration research’. Considering the preceding views, one can
rightfully ask why ethics review of social science research in general, and of Public
Administration research in particular, is necessary and how the necessity for ethics
review can be assessed.
This article thus reports on research aimed at assessing why Public
Administration research is eligible for research ethics review at all. While the
concept
‘eligible’
refers
to
‘satisfying
appropriate
conditions’
(Oxford
Dictionaries, 2014), in this research, ‘eligibility’ refers to the satisfying reasons,
convictions and conditions for research ethics review. The purpose of this research
was to determine to what extent research in Public Administration qualifies for
ethics review or not. To this effect, it was necessary to first identify those qualifying
factors (reasons, convictions and conditions) for ethics review most commonly used
by institutional research ethics review committees (ERCs) and to apply them in
order to determine whether research in Public Administration is eligible for ethics
review. A comprehensive literature review on research integrity, research ethics and
human subject protection regulations has been done in order to identify the qua-
lifying factors for research ethics review. Although the literature review revealed a
sharp difference of opinion on the approach to research ethics review in the social
sciences especially (Van den Hoonaard and Tolich, 2014: 87), those concepts on
which relative agreement exist have been combined into a conceptual framework
for assessing the eligibility of Public Administration research for ethics review.
The authors of this article have used this framework for a content analysis of
articles published in one volume (year) each of two international peer-reviewed
journals for Public Administration. The main purpose of the analysis was thus
to assess why the research reported in these articles qualifies for research ethics
review, or not. Finally, we offer suggestions for higher education institutions and
journal editors to raise the awareness of researchers in Public Administration about
reporting on the ethical considerations relevant to their research. The authors hope
158
International Review of Administrative Sciences 83(1S)
that this article extends an ongoing critical analysis of new and existing ethics
regulations and regimes (Van den Hoonaard and Tolich, 2014: 95).
Research integrity and ethics: a review of the literature
Social science research, and, for that matter, Public Administration research, is
distinguished from other kinds of human inquiry by its dedication to the quest for
trust in the truth of research. However, another imperative that is seemingly not so
commonly regarded as an imperative for the pursuit of scientific knowledge is
research integrity (Whitbeck, 2004: 48). In fact, a preliminary survey of the scho-
larly literature in Public Administration has shown that scholars in this field, with
the exception of Cossette (2004: 213–234) and Jordan (2014: 85–108), are to a large
extent silent with regard to research integrity and ethics.
Cossette (2004: 213) reports on administrative science faculty members’ percep-
tions of research integrity and shows that the respondents ‘did not take the ques-
tion of research integrity lightly’. The definition of ‘research integrity’ in this article,
however, seems to exclude ‘unacceptable behaviour by the researcher concerning
his or her responsibility towards the research subjects, for example by revealing the
identity of a research subject without the latter’s consent’ (Cossette, 2004: 216).
However, Jordan’s article focuses specifically on the part of research integrity
excluded by Cossette’s definition, namely, research ethics review. Her article
departs from the criticism of the IRB’s oversight system focusing on ‘ethical
conduct of research with human participants’ (Jordan, 2014: 85). She argues that
‘the regulations that govern the IRB system are not applicable to research in the
social sciences, such as political science, sociology, and public administration’
(Jordan, 2014: 86).
Jordan’s (2014: 86) understanding of research ethics review resonates with those
of Dingwall (2012: 3) and Hammersley (2009: 213), namely, the protection of
human subjects (Dingwall, 2012: 3), including:
respecting the autonomy of rights of individuals and/or groups, not harming people,
protecting individual and collective interests, taking account of people’s needs, dealing
with people justly, for example, not exploiting them, treating equitably the various
people encountered during the course of data collection, and respecting privacy and
confidentiality. (Hammersley, 2009: 213)
The ‘mess’ referred to by Dingwall (2012: 3) and the concerns about research ethics
in the social sciences referred to by Feeley (2007: 764) have been shown to be a
reaction against the adoption of measures by various universities worldwide to
regulate research ethics (Dingwall, 2012: 16, 18, 21; Hammersley, 2009: 212–
213), as well as the decision by several peer-reviewed journals to require proof of
ethics review as one of the conditions for considering an article for publication
(Jordan, 2014: 87; Redman and Merz, 2006: 248).
Wessels and Visagie
159
In the process of determining the necessity to regulate ‘research ethics’ in
Public Administration research, this article applies the concept of ‘research ethics’
as understood by Dingwall (2012: 3), Feeley (2007: 764), Hammersley (2009: 212–
213), Hammersley and Traianou (2011: 382, 386) and Jordan (2014: 99), namely, as
a concern about and regulation of research involving human subjects. Van den
Hoonaard and Tolich (2014: 92) similarly denote the importance ‘not to disconnect
the ethics review process from human beings, including researchers themselves’.
Hammersley (2009: 212–213) argues that the main challenge for ERCs in
making sound judgements about the ethics of proposed research is a lack of con-
sensus among social scientists about ethics. He, inter alia, refers to the principles of
the Belmont Report as a form of ‘ethical enthusiasm or moralism’, conflicting with
the ‘goal of producing good quality research findings’ (Hammersley, 2009: 219).
Other scholars, such as Schrag (2011: 125) and Van den Hoonaard and Tolich
(2014: 91), similarly share their uneasiness with the application of the principles
embedded in the Belmont Report as a framework for ethics oversight in social
science research.
Despite the above-mentioned critique, the Belmont Report, with its...
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