Qualitative Research: An Introduction to Methods and Designs

Ethical Principles

Cognizance of the critical need to attend to ethical issues in research arose from atrocities perpetrated in the name of research, such as the medical experiments conducted by the Nazis during World War II and the Tuskegee experiment, which involved studying the course of syphilis in black men in studies conducted in the United States from 1933 to 1972 even after a treatment for the disease had been discovered. These examples represent extremes in the unethical conduct of research; however, researchers also need to be aware of less obvious, yet still harmful, effects of research. In the United States, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was established in 1978 to ...