Career Research in South Africa: Challenges for the Future

This paper describes and critically examines aspects of career research in South Africa from 1980 to 1997. The research is grouped into four categories, theory, theoretical constructs, career counseling and education, and career assessment. Suggestions are provided on the directions South African career research should take.     

Reassessing the Role of the Biomedical Research Ethics Committee

The role of the Research Ethics Committee (REC) in the design, conduct and dissemination of scientific research is still evolving and many important questions remain unanswered. Hence, the aim of this paper is to address some of the uncertainty that exists around the role and responsibilities of RECs and to discuss some of the controversy that exists over the criteria that RECs should follow when evaluating a research proposal. The discussion is organised around five of the major roles currently performed by RECs when assessing proposals in the biomedical sciences. It will be shown that these five roles need to be critically evaluated and reassessed. The five roles addressed are: assessing the legitimacy and validity of the informed consent process, second, conducting a comprehensive risk/benefit analysis, third, assessing the validity of a research proposal, fourth, ensuring that researchers observe the social norms, values, customs, traditions and laws that prevail in the community or jurisdiction in which the research will be conducted and finally, monitoring the research project as it unfolds and providing an ongoing advisory and consultancy service to both new and experienced researchers. In reassessing the role of the REC, this paper concludes with a set of general recommendations for RECs. These provide some guidance on the minimum criteria that should be followed when RECs evaluate proposals. These guidelines will be beneficial for new and experienced members of REC, and will help to make the process a more objective, efficient and standardised process. The guidelines will also be beneficial for researchers in the biomedical sciences who are preparing proposals for ethical review.     

Human Participants in Engineering Research: Notes from a Fledgling Ethics Committee

For the past half-century, issues relating to the ethical conduct of human research have focused largely on the domain of medical, and more recently social–psychological research. The modern regime of applied ethics, emerging as it has from the Nuremberg trials and certain other historical antecedents, applies the key principles of: autonomy, respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice to human beings who enter trials of experimental drugs and devices (Martensen in J Hist Med Allied Sci 56(2):168–175, 2001). Institutions such as Institutional Review Boards (in the U.S.) and Ethics Committees (in Europe and elsewhere) oversee most governmentally-funded medical research around the world, in more than a hundred nations that are signers of the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association 2008). Increasingly, research outside of medicine has been recognized to pose potential risks to human subjects of experiments. Ethics committees now operate in the US, Canada, the U.K. and Australia to oversee all governmental-funded research, and in other jurisdictions, the range of research covered by such committees is expanding. Social science, anthropology, and other fields are falling under more clear directives to conduct a formal ethical review for basic research involving human participants (Federman et al. in Responsible research: a systems approach to protecting research participants. National Academies Press, Washington, 2003, p. 36). The legal and institutional response for protecting human subjects in the course of developing non-medical technologies, engineering, and design is currently vague, but some universities are establishing ethics committees to oversee their human subjects research even where the experiments involved are non-medical and not technically covered by the Declaration of Helsinki. In The Netherlands, as in most of Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa, no laws mandate an ethical review of non-medical research. Yet, nearly 2 years ago we launched a pilot ethics committee at our technical university and began soliciting our colleagues to submit their studies for review. In the past year, we have become officially recognized as a human subjects ethics committee for our university and we are beginning the process of requiring all studies using human subjects to apply for our approval. In this article, we consider some of the special problems relating to protecting human participants in a technology context, and discuss some of our experiences and insights about reviewing human subjects research at a technical university, concluding: that not less than in medical studies, human participants used in technology research benefit from ethical committees’ reviews, practical requirements for publications, grants, and avoiding legal liability are also served by such committees, and ethics committees in such contexts have many similarities to, but certain other special foci than medical ethics committees. We believe that this experience, and these observations, are helpful for those seeking to establish such committees in technology research contexts, and for framing the particular issues that may arise in such contexts for the benefit of researchers, and nascent committees seeking to establish their own procedures.     

The Challenges and Responsibilifies of Contextual Theology

Reading from this Place: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation , Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (eds)
Local Theology: Church Community in Dialogue , John Reader
Models of Contextual Theology , Stephen B. Bevans     

Challenges to providing a support group for HIV-positive prisoners in South Africa

In prison populations around the world, the prevalence of HIV is often higher than that of the general population. The prison population is at high risk for HIV infection, particularly through the sharing of contaminated needles and high-risk sexual activity. Counselling is regarded as a key element in the prevention and treatment of HIV infection. Support groups provide essential supportive counselling for HIV-positive individuals struggling to cope. This paper looks at the challenges to providing a support group for HIV-positive prisoners. The author's experience of attempting to provide a support group highlights two key challenges: organisational issues which lead to disruptions for the group; and challenges to ensuring confidentiality, a core ethical principle in HIV counselling.     

Satisfaction with Family Life in South Africa: The Role of Socioeconomic Status

This paper investigates the determinants of self-reported satisfaction with family life, applied to the South African context, with socioeconomic status (SES) as the main covariate and family functioning as the secondary covariate of interest. An individual-, household-, and subjective SES index is constructed via multiple correspondence analysis. Structural equation modelling (SEM) and multiple-group SEM (MGSEM) are used to analyse the role of SES in explaining satisfaction with family life. Higher levels of SES, especially household SES and subjective SES, are related to greater satisfaction with family life. Family functioning, in terms of better family flexibility, is associated with higher satisfaction with family life. The MGSEM results indicate that the role of family flexibility in explaining satisfaction with family life is similar across SES quartiles; family flexibility is an important predictor of family-life satisfaction, regardless of SES quartile.     

Research Ethics Education in the STEM Disciplines: The Promises and Challenges of a Gaming Approach

While education in ethics and the responsible conduct of research (RCR) is widely acknowledged as an essential component of graduate education, particularly in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and math), little consensus exists on how best to accomplish this goal. Recent years have witnessed a turn toward the use of games in this context. Drawing from two NSF-funded grants (one completed and one on-going), this paper takes a critical look at the use of games in ethics and RCR education. It does so by: (a) setting the development of research and engineering ethics games in wider historical and theoretical contexts, which highlights their promise to solve important pedagogical problems; (b) reporting on some initial results from our own efforts to develop a game; and (c) reflecting on the challenges that arise in using games for ethics education. In our discussion of the challenges, we draw out lessons to improve this nascent approach to ethics education in the STEM disciplines.     

Promoting a Contextual Perspective in the Application of the ACA Code of Ethics: The Ethics into Action Map

Because community counselors work within an increasingly broad array of practice settings, it is imperative for them to understand how to apply the ACA Code of Ethics (American Counseling Association, 2005) to specific practice settings. The author examines ethics applied to unique practice settings and proposes the Ethics into Action Map as a method to promote an increased understanding of the application of ethical standards to specific contexts. Case examples are provided to illustrate the use of the Ethics into Action Map.     

The Mission and Role of Psychology in a Traumatised and Changing Society: The Case of South Africa

At present there is a “crisis” in psychology in South Africa. A mental health investigation has been initiated and a national task force appointed in order to reform the profession in all its aspects. These events are the result of a deep sense of unease about the mission, relevance and image of the profession and an awareness that mainstream psychology is irrelevant to the nature and needs of the majority black population. Presently psychology in South Africa is at a crossroads. This paper identifies the mental health needs of the majority black population and suggests professional training programmes for future psychologists and the utilisation of services and resources in delivery systems. The article also re-defines the psychologist's role in a divided and traumatised society.     

The Evolution of Ethics: Personal Perspectives of ACA Ethics Committee Chairs

This article presents a survey of the American Counseling Association Ethics Committee chairs regarding their experiences, learning, and insights in the area of professional counselor ethics resulting from their service on the committee. In addition, ethics chairs reflect on current and future trends in counselor ethics.     

Reporting Ethics Committee Approval in Public Administration Research

While public administration research is thriving because of increased attention to social scientific rigor, lingering problems of methods and ethics remain. This article investigates the reporting of ethics approval within public administration publications. Beginning with an overview of ethics requirements regarding research with human participants, I turn to an examination of human participants protections for public administration research. Next, I present the findings of my analysis of articles published in the top five public administration journals over the period from 2000 to 2012, noting the incidences of ethics approval reporting as well as funding reporting. In explicating the importance of ethics reporting for public administration research, as it relates to replication, reputation, and vulnerable populations, I conclude with recommendations for increasing ethics approval reporting in public administration research.     

Research Ethics in a Business School Context: The Establishment of a Review Committee and the Primary Issues of Concern

This paper describes the establishment of and the issues experienced by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) of a Business School within a University in Ireland. It identifies the issue of voluntarily given informed consent as a key challenge for RECs operating in a Business School context. The paper argues that whilst the typology of ethical issues in business research are similar to the wider social sciences, the fact that much research is carried out in the workplace adds to the complexity of the REC deliberations. The use of deception in the design of research studies, pestering the local community and the potential for harm to the researcher are also discussed briefly in the context of business research. The experiences of the authors’, two of whom have served as respective chairpersons of the business school REC since its inception in addition to being members of the university level REC, inform the discussion.     

临床研究中的受试者权益保障面临的挑战

伦理委员会是保障受试者权益的监督、管理者,研究者是保障受试者权益的直接实施者.面对日益增多的国际多中心临床研究,中国的伦理委员会和研究者面临很大的挑战.只有提高伦理委员会和研究者的能力并切实改进临床研究中存在的常见问题,才能更好地保障受试者权益.     

谈伦理审查质量

针对伦理审查质量的含义进行了深入的剖析,对伦理审查质量体系的各个要素,包括法规框架,人员资质、独立性、管理和资源、审查工作的一致性和可预见性、明晰的职责流程等进行了逐一解释,同时提出质量管理环节中建立伦理委员会的内部评估机制,并定期进行独立于伦理委员会的第三方评估的重要意义.     

Getting Beyond Form Filling: The Role of Institutional Governance in Human Research Ethics

It has become almost a truism to describe the interaction between research ethics committees and researchers as being marred by distrust and conflict. The ethical conduct of researchers is increasingly a matter of institutional concern because of the degree to which non-compliance with national standards can expose the entire institution to risk. This has transformed research ethics into what some have described as a research ethics industry. In an operational sense, there is considerable focus on modifying research behaviour through a combination of education and sanctions. The assessment of whether a researcher is ‘ethical’ is too often based on whether they submit their work for review by an ethics committee. However, is such an approach making a useful contribution to the actual ethical conduct of research and the protection of the interests of participants? Does a focus on ethical review minimise institutional risk? Instead it has been suggested that ethics committees may be distorting or frustrating useful research and are promoting a culture of either mindless rule following or frustrated resistance. An alternative governance approach is required. There is a need for a strong institutional focus on promoting and supporting the reflective practice of researchers through every stage of their work. By situating research ethics within the broader framework of institutional governance, this paper suggests it is possible to establish arrangements that actually facilitate excellent and ethical research.     

An Examination of Serial Homicide in South Africa: The Practice to Research Link

In this paper, South African serial homicide cases will be used to illustrate how practice can inform research and how research can aid practice by highlighting key questions that need to be answered and practice‐based assumptions that need to be empirically tested. The cases will also be used to highlight some of the unique features of series in South Africa. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ethics of Globalization: Challenges and Prospects

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - Globalization has enormous implications. As convergence of technologies facilitated people to connect, people not only communicated but also...