Category: Response

This is in response to Leona’s post

LDRS591, Unit 5, Activity 5.4

Question: Do you have an example of an ethically controversial study you participated in or read? What was the result of the study?

I do not have an example of a study in recent times that had ethical concerns around it. In medical literature I have read studies which have been terminated pre maturely when one arm ( control or study group) was identified as statistically significant from the intervention or lack thereof. In my  limited experience with research during my residency and fellowship training I learnt about IRB ( Institutional review boards) . I assume this applies to individual institutions. I wonder if there is bigger governing body that all researchers are answerable to if their research involves human subjects. I guess my question here is if someone with a non institutional affiliation were to do research with human subjects, under whose purview does the ethical regulation of that research fall?

This is in response to Layla Zhang’s post :

Unit 4, Learning activity 4.5

My thoughts are similar to Layla’s in that prior to reading the Plan-Clark and Creswell textbook, I was vaguely familiar with the elements of what made a high quality research report. I mostly made that decision intuitively, or based on what whether I was able to find the information that I was looking for in a study. The required reading that we have done so far, in this course, has given me the tools that can help me analyse the quality of a research study better.

Addressing her question -“How would you organize the literature to form the theory or conceptual framework when conducting the study?” . Plano-Clark and Creswell (2015) explain how a literature review can be organized into a literature map , page 137 . If one arranges the literature into different themes and places them on a map, then keeping in mind the hypothesis / hypotheses , one can formulate a conceptual framework for their study. I also think that if one uses the “thematic review ” for literature (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2015, p. 140), that could also give some direction towards creating a framework for a study. How the literature is organized in a research report is a very important element that helps the reader understand how the authors plan to study their hypothesis based on their review of literature.

References

Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Zhang, L. (2018, January 27).  Unit 4 Learning activity 4.5. Retrieved from https://create.twu.ca/layla11/2018/01/27/unit-4-learning-activity-4-5/