Ethical Issues in Social Science Research
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The social sciences necessarily involve studies of real people in real situations, and this raises ethical questions regarding the relationship between the researcher and the subject, privacy issues for the subject, questions of the exploitation of subjects, and so on. These issues have become more open in recent years as social scientists have been criticized for certain practices and have had the validity of their research questioned because of a concern for the ethical dimensions of this type of research. An examination of the issues will show the types of questions being raised and some of the suggestions that have been made to avoid ethical problems in the social sciences. Oscar Lewis's ethnographic study of a Mexican family, The Children of Sanchez, will be used as an example. This book has been criticized for perceived ethical lapses, as have other Lewis works, and critics have raised questions about the way the researcher might have used the poverty of one family for his own gain and advancement and about the validity of emphasizing certain aspects of the lives of human beings as if those aspects were definitive. In recent years there has been increasing concern in the literature regarding the protection of the rights and welfare of human subjects in biomedical, behavioral, and social science research. The initial concern seems to have developed with reference to biomedical research, perhaps because potential damage
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cipation; deception, or misleading the subject about the purpose of the research; invasion of privacy, or intrusion into matters the subject would rather keep to him or herself; breach of confidentiality; stress, or the psychological difficulties that might occur to participants because of the study; and collective risks, or those harms that might extend to others beyond the subject. The issue is not always clear-cut, nor are these terms mutually exclusive: "In fact, it is difficult to find much evidence of undeniable outright harm caused to the subjects of social research. Where abuses have been alleged they have also been debated by reasonable persons on both sides."
OSCAR LEWIS
Oscar Lewis was born in 1914 and died in 1970. He began his career as a research associate at Yale University and then worked for the Department of Justice, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of state before returning to academe as a professor at Washington State University. He spent most of his career at the University of Illinois at Urbana. He wrote numerous books about Mexico and Mexican families, including the well-known and popular Children of Sanchez, published in 1961.
Lewis had both critics and supporters. Saul Bellow
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Approximate Word count = 2682
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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