Ethics Assignment

PDF due via Canvas by March 5, 2p. Make sure you put a name on your paper.

There are two parts to this assignment.

1. If you have not yet completed MIT’s IRB/human subjects training you need to do so. Complete the Human Subjects training (COUHES) module “Social & Behavioral Research Investigator” available via https://couhes.mit.edu/training-research-involving-human-subjects (this link will take you to the training site). This is not a quick task so make sure to allocate enough time. Save a pdf showing you have completed the training and append it to the written essay (described below). If you have already completed the training in another class/university simply go into the system and you can “view/print/share” the record to create that pdf.
2. Write a 3-5 page reflection on one of the issues tackled within our ethics reading or online training. In particular, reflect on an ethical angle in relation to either a project you could undertake or, retrospectively, on a project you already completed. If neither of these apply speak to me and we can talk about a prompt for you to write on. Perhaps consider how you will handle privacy or implement an ethic of care in the project. What are the benefits, or perhaps even costs, to do doing so? What complications might you encounter and need to deal with in actually carrying it your approach? Alternatively, you may reflect on an issue that arose in a prior piece of work. Perhaps you ran into consent problems in ways you didn’t anticipate or, in retrospect, realize you hadn’t even thought of the issue and now have to reconsider it. The goal of the essay is just to get you diving into the terrain and thinking through some issues/implications (good/bad/difficult/etc) for your own work.