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This chapter has two major sections, one focusing on ethics and one on cultural competence. These are two themes that you will consider when you conduct social work research. Ethics provide rules of behavior based on moral values. For example, you should not conduct research that would potentially harm the study participants or invade their privacy. And you should not engage in behaviors designed to coerce people into participating in your study. When you complete this chapter, you should have fundamental competence in the consideration of ethical principles for your research study and be prepared to deal with the organizational body that must review your research protocol for ethical concerns.

Cultural competence refers to competence that recognizes the influence of culture with regard to practice. For social work research, this means including culture in the review of literature about the behaviors being researched, recognizing cultural influences on the target behaviors in selecting a study sample, and analyzing data in a way that includes relevant cultural variables. This type of competence informs the research process in a way that makes it more meaningful for our understanding of the cultural influences on behavior.

This chapter addresses the themes of ethics in the use of human subjects in research and cultural competence in research. On the completion of this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

1 Define the concept of ethics in the use of human subjects in research

2 Identify several ethical issues in the use of human subjects in research with special focus on (a) protection from harm, (b) protecting privacy, (c) obtaining voluntary consent, (d) avoiding deception, and (e) weighing the risks and benefits of actions that might avoid certain protections

3 Explain several ethical principles that support the expectations related to the issues in the use of human subjects in research

4 Identify the nature of the IRB in the monitoring of social work research that employs human subjects

5 Report on some of the violations of human rights that led to the use of IRBs

6 Identify how cultural competence is relevant to social work research

7 Explain how cultural competence is related to various types of research

8 Identify several strategies for culturally competent evaluation

9 Report on the question of the extent to which social workers have been found to be culturally competent in survey research

10 Discuss one approach to rethinking cultural competence

A concept that binds ethics and cultural competence is the vulnerable population. People in a vulnerable population are viewed as vulnerable because they are likely to view their participation in research to be necessary because of the population in which they reside. For example, prisoners may feel that they cannot say no to the invitation to participate. Children are not viewed as being in a position to give informed consent because they are too young for this task. The institutional review board (IRB) of the University of Virginia lists several groups as being vulnerable populations. These groups include prisoners, children, cognitively impaired individuals, minorities, economically disadvantaged persons, terminally ill patients, students, and employees (Institutional Review Board for Health Sciences Research, University of Virginia, 2017).

This review board explained the inclusion of members of minority groups as follows:

In addition to requiring the equitable selection of women as research subjects, Federal regulations require the equitable selection of minorities as research subjects. The inclusion of minorities in research is important both to ensure that they receive an equal share of the benefits of the research and to ensure that they do not bear a disproportionate burden. (Institutional Review Board for Health Sciences Research, University of Virginia, 2017)

As you can see, there are two themes addressed: (1) the sufficient inclusion to the benefits of research and (2) the avoidance of excessive burden.