Relevant Ethical Principles Research Articles

Empowering Neurodiverse Voices in Research Ethics through a Playful Card-Based Approach

Whenever carrying out research, all participants must know their rights, especially when those participants are perceived as being part of a vulnerable group; however, discussing ethics in investigation can be difficult. To solve this challenge, a playful approach was taken, as playfulness can make dull tasks – especially those that can cause discomfort and difficulties – more entertaining and help people approach them with an open mind. This study reports on four empirical approaches that used a playful process to raise awareness about ethical concerns when doing research with neurodiverse people. For this activity, 39 cards describing and illustrating several relevant and evidence-based ethical principles were created. Then, three case studies were developed, each based on a different focus group composed of ten neurodivergent self-advocates and one with professors and students from Brazil. Each neurodivergent group was also accompanied by three support workers from the partner associations (two of the groups were accompanied by the same individuals). In total, 56 participants engaged in a playful activity that consisted of a game of ‘broken telephone’ where the title of a card (representing an ethical principle) is read to one of the players who then has to whisper it to the next person in line, repeating this process until reaching the last person. The last person then says what they heard out loud, with the original message being revealed for contrast. The title of the cards was discussed by the groups to understand if it was clear and understandable or difficult and confusing. Although not all the cards were validated through the activity, 14 were flagged by neurodivergent people as "needing changes". The feedback was recorded and is presented here. This study set out to validate a set of cards in easy-to-read language that could introduce ethical concepts to participants in research projects through a playful activity. Future study will see the cards iterated upon through the feedback gathered along with the creation of a small guide on how they may be used in playful activities.

Nursing professions' distinctive ethical standards: Exploring a code of ethics.

This article presents an examination of the ethical code of nursing in Israel, focusing on the nurse-patient, nurse-colleague, and nurse-professional leadership relationships. This article offers for the first English translation of the Israel Nursing Association's Code of Ethics to facilitate international scholarly discussion, and to critique this Code through the lens of Asa Kasher's philosophical test, thereby examining its completeness and practical utility. As it stands today, the code lacks clarification of the professional ethical uniqueness of nursing. To address this gap, the article adopts a philosophical approach using Kasher's test named the Three Components of the Practical Ideal to distill the distinctive ethical obligations imposed on nursing professionals. The article highlights the importance of professionalism in nursing, encompassing expertise, autonomy, and recognition, as emphasized in the Code of Ethics. However, the current code does not explicitly delineate the unique requirements specific to nursing. Thus, the article proposes the integration of these explicit requirements into the Code of Ethics through collaborative efforts. Furthermore, it emphasizes the crucial role of nursing education and training programs in fostering professional identity formation based on the strengthening of the commitment to relevant ethical principles. The article contributes to the advancement of nursing ethics by providing a comprehensive framework for understanding and implementing proper ethical conduct within the nursing profession.

Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence A Framework for Responsible Information Systems Development

This research aims to develop a framework that explains ethical considerations in the responsible development of Information Systems (IS) related to artificial intelligence (AI). The research method used involved a thorough literature review to identify relevant ethical principles in the context of AI and IS. Apart from that, an in-depth analysis of various existing models and frameworks was also carried out to understand ethical considerations in technology development. The result of this research is a framework consisting of a series of ethical principles that must be considered at every stage of IS development that uses AI technology. This framework considers not only the technical aspects of system development, but also relevant social, legal and cultural aspects. Through the application of this framework, IS developers can ensure that the resulting products are not only of high technical quality, but also pay attention to their impact on individuals, society and the environment. The conclusions of this research emphasize the importance of including ethical considerations as an integral part of the IS development process that uses AI to achieve the goals of socially responsible technology development.

A Qualitative Inquiry Into the Occupational Challenges Faced by Home-Based Caregivers of People Living With HIV in South Africa’s Gauteng Province

Community home-based caregivers caring for people living with human immunodeficiency virus (PLWHIV) are instrumental in relieving the demand pressures experienced by healthcare service centers. Although their contributions to the healthcare system are essential, they do so under difficult conditions necessitating social work support. This study was conducted in the Gauteng province of South Africa in 2017 to explore the occupational challenges faced by community home-based care caregivers of PLWHIV. Following the qualitative research approach, eighteen caregivers were identified and sampled using purposive and snowball sampling techniques in semi-structured interviews. The data was manually analyzed according to Tesch’s eight steps of qualitative data analysis. This gave rise to four themes: reception by community members, uncooperative clients and families, unsupportive healthcare professionals, and working in unsafe conditions. Following relevant ethical principles such as informed consent, confidentiality, and anonymity throughout the study, trustworthiness was continuously upheld through the principles of prolonged engagement, triangulation, member checking, thick description, and audit trail. The need for psychosocial support programs for caregivers, community and family educational programs, and strengthening partnerships for caregivers, communities, and healthcare professionals is recommended, given the success of community home-based care (CHBC) services for PLWHIV.

Understanding regional variation in euthanasia using geomedical frameworks: a critical ethical reflection

Considerable geographical variation in the uptake of euthanasia has been reported: some municipalities in the Netherlands have a 25 times higher euthanasia rate than other municipalities. Current ‘geomedical’ frameworks for interpreting practice variation in health care utilization seem inadequately tailored to understand regional variation in morally controversial procedures such as euthanasia. The aim of this conceptual article is threefold: i) to add relevant medical ethical principles to current frameworks; ii) to provide a four-step ethical-geomedical model for the interpretation of geographical differences in the utilization of health care in general and for ethically controversial treatments in specific; iii) to gain better understanding of the existing geographical variation in the incidence of euthanasia by using this framework in our analysis.

Health professions students’ approaches towards practice-driven ethical dilemmas; a case-based qualitative study

BackgroundIn healthcare practice, ethical challenges are inevitable and their optimal handling may potentialy improve patient care. Ethical development in medical education is critical for the transition from a medical and health sciences student to an ethical healthcare practitioner. Understanding the health professions students’ approaches towards practice-driven ethical dilemmas could harness i the effective ethical development in their medical education. This study attempts to identify the health professions students’ approaches towards practice-driven ethical dilemmas.MethodsAn inductive qualitative evaluation was conducted on six recorded videos of health professions students’ case-based online group discussions, followed by a one-hour online ethics workshop. The online ethics workshop was organized with students from the College of Medicine, College of Dental Medicine and College of Pharmacy at the University of Sharjah, and the College of Medicine at the United Arab Emirates University. . The recorded videos were transcribed verbatim and imported to the qualitative data analysis software of MAXQDA 2022. Data were analyzed applying four stages of review, reflect, reduce and retrieve and two different coders triangulated the findings.ResultsSix themes emerged from the qualitative analysis of the health professions students’ approaches to the practice-based ethical dilemmas; (1) emotions, (2) personal experiences, (3) law and legal system, (4) professional background, (5) knowledge of medical research and (6) inter-professional education. In addition, during the case-based group discussions in the ethics workshop, students efficiently applied the relevant ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice in their reasoning process to reach an ethical decision.ConclusionThe findings of this study explained how health professions students resolve ethical dilemmas in their ethical reasoning process. This work sheds light on ethical development in medical education by gaining students’ perspectives in dealing with complex clinical scenarios. The findings from this qualitative evaluation will aid academic medical institutions in developing medical and research-based ethics curriculum to transform students to ethical leaders.

The Ethics of Participatory Action Research with People Living in Poverty

This article is based on the webinar “The Ethics of Research on Poverty” held in April 2018. Coauthored by the four presenters of the webinar, it brings together perspectives on poverty from lived experience in the United States, academia, the District Six Museum in South Africa, and the Joseph Wresinski Centre for Archives and Research in France. The article argues that the ethical principles of participatory action research (PAR) are too generic to address the specific characteristics of research projects conducted with people living in poverty. PAR projects on poverty require, in addition to the relevant general ethical principles of PAR (i.e., leading transformational PAR, treating all participants as co-researchers, nurturing respect for the individual and the group, and raising awareness on the level of literacy of each participant), specific ethical guidelines. For PAR to address the needs of people living in poverty, the choice of words on poverty should be aimed at reducing symbolic and epistemic violence, questions should be framed so as to encourage knowledge to be shared, research should yield direct benefits to participants and outweigh risks, and researchers should aim at eradicating extreme poverty. Researchers failing to apply these principles may find themselves guilty of committing unintended symbolic or epistemic violence to the thinking of people in poverty or fall for the soft bigotry of low expectations that inevitably triggers underperformance. To bridge the divide between narratives of people in poverty and interpretations of these narratives , researchers should be aware of their own biases and remain open to being challenged.

A privacy-preserving dialogue system based on argumentation

• We propose a dialogue system architecture able to preserve the privacy of the users, a problem that is scarcely addressed in the literature. • We perform reasoning through computational argumentation, thus leveraging detailed explanations of the system’s answers. • We address language understanding with state-of-the-art methods. • We discuss a COVID-19 vaccine information case-study. • We provide a detailed experimental evaluation of a prototype implementation. Dialogue systems are a class of increasingly popular AI-based solutions to support timely and interactive communication with users in many domains. Due to the apparent possibility of users disclosing their sensitive data when interacting with such systems, ensuring that the systems follow the relevant laws, regulations, and ethical principles should be of primary concern. In this context, we discuss the main open points regarding these aspects and propose an approach grounded on a computational argumentation framework. Our approach ensures that user data are managed according to data minimization, purpose limitation, and integrity. Moreover, it is endowed with the capability of providing motivations for the system responses to offer transparency and explainability. We illustrate the architecture using as a case study a COVID-19 vaccine information system, discuss its theoretical properties, and evaluate it empirically.

The influence of ethical principles and policy awareness priming on university students’ judgements about ICT code of conduct compliance

PurposeTo protect information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and resources against poor cyber hygiene behaviours, organisations commonly require internal users to confirm they will abide by an ICT Code of Conduct. Before commencing enrolment, university students sign ICT policies, however, individuals can ignore or act contrary to these policies. This study aims to evaluate whether students can apply ICT Codes of Conduct and explores viable approaches for ensuring that students understand how to act ethically and in accordance with such codes.Design/methodology/approachThe authors designed a between-subjects experiment involving 260 students’ responses to five scenario-pairs that involve breach/non-breach of a university’s ICT policy following a priming intervention to heighten awareness of ICT policy or relevant ethical principles, with a control group receiving no priming.FindingsThis study found a significant difference in students’ responses to the breach versus non-breach cases, indicating their ability to apply the ICT Code of Conduct. Qualitative comments revealed the priming materials influenced their reasoning.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors’ priming interventions were inadequate for improving breach recognition compared to the control group. More nuanced and targeted priming interventions are suggested for future studies.Practical implicationsAppropriate application of ICT Code of Conduct can be measured by collecting student/employee responses to breach/non-breach scenario pairs based on the Code and embedded with ethical principles.Social implicationsShared awareness and protection of ICT resources.Originality/valueCompliance with ICT Codes of Conduct by students is under-investigated. This study shows that code-based scenarios can measure understanding and suggest that targeted priming might offer a non-resource intensive training approach.

Ethical values and principles to guide the fair allocation of resources in response to a pandemic: a rapid systematic review

BackgroundThe coronavirus 2019 pandemic placed unprecedented pressures on healthcare services and magnified ethical dilemmas related to how resources should be allocated. These resources include, among others, personal protective equipment, personnel, life-saving equipment, and vaccines. Decision-makers have therefore sought ethical decision-making tools so that resources are distributed both swiftly and equitably. To support the development of such a decision-making tool, a systematic review of the literature on relevant ethical values and principles was undertaken. The aim of this review was to identify ethical values and principles in the literature which relate to the equitable allocation of resources in response to an acute public health threat, such as a pandemic.MethodsA rapid systematic review was conducted using MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google Scholar, LitCOVID and relevant reference lists. The time period of the search was January 2000 to 6th April 2020, and the search was restricted to human studies. January 2000 was selected as a start date as the aim was to capture ethical values and principles within acute public health threat situations. No restrictions were made with regard to language. Ethical values and principles were extracted and examined thematically.ResultsA total of 1,618 articles were identified. After screening and application of eligibility criteria, 169 papers were included in the thematic synthesis. The most commonly mentioned ethical values and principles were: Equity, reciprocity, transparency, justice, duty to care, liberty, utility, stewardship, trust and proportionality. In some cases, ethical principles were conflicting, for example, Protection of the Public from Harm and Liberty.ConclusionsAllocation of resources in response to acute public health threats is challenging and must be simultaneously guided by many ethical principles and values. Ethical decision-making strategies and the prioritisation of different principles and values needs to be discussed with the public in order to prepare for future public health threats. An evidence-based tool to guide decision-makers in making difficult decisions is required. The equitable allocation of resources in response to an acute public health threat is challenging, and many ethical principles may be applied simultaneously. An evidence-based tool to support difficult decisions would be helpful to guide decision-makers.

Ethics of Facial Recognition Technology in Law Enforcement: A Case Study

Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) has promising applications in law enforcement due to its efficiency and cost-effectiveness. However, this technology poses significant ethical concerns that overshadow its benefits. Responsible use of FRT requires consideration of these ethical concerns that legislation fails to cover. This study investigates the ethical issues of FRT use and relevant ethical frameworks and principles designed to combat these issues. Drawing on this, we propose and discuss a code of ethics for FRT to ensure its ethical use in the context of New Zealand law enforcement.

Formation of digital competencies among students of economic specialties

The rapid advancement of digital technology is altering the skillsets required of specialists. In today’s world, a competitive analyst working in the field of economics must possess not only professional skills, but also digital competence, which encompasses not only digital skills, but also a body of knowledge and perspectives on the nature and role of information technologies and opportunities, as well as relevant legal and ethical principles. The article examines modern theoretical foundations and approaches to the development of digital literacy in lifelong learning processes: specifically, one of the tools for determining the level of formation of digital competence using the Tsifrogram test (which is based on the conceptual model of digital competence of citizens DigComp - The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens) is described and analyzed in depth. The study was conducted using competence-based, personality-activity, and communication techniques. The economic analyst training program featured active and interactive teaching methods and practices. The findings of a study on the level of digital competence formation among university students of economic specializations are provided. The most important suggestions for improving students’ digital competence are studied, selected, and highlighted. It is proposed to build a roadmap for boosting students’ digital competency during their university studies in the future.

Normalizing intersex children through genital surgery: the medical perspective and the experience reported by intersex adults

This paper explores the conceptions of specialized physicians regarding intersex child surgery, and contrasts them with the experiences of intersex adults. The gap between the views of health personnel—who affirm that they are “doing their best”—and those of intersex persons—who report the adverse consequences of surgery—highlights the need to stop unnecessary normalization surgeries in children. The findings of this study suggest that bridging the gap between the medical perspective and the experience of intersex people requires opening direct channels of communication among all those involved in the clinical process, incorporating intersex individuals into bioethics committees, encouraging contact with the parents of intersex children, implementing regulations that unambiguously delay or prohibit unnecessary interventions, promoting a debate on relevant ethical principles and human rights to protect the interests of all intersex people, and disseminating the contents of such a debate.

Autonomy, liberty, and risk: The ethical and legal challenges of suspending leave of absence for patients detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments around the world have imposed significant restrictions on freedom of movement to tackle the virus. Mental health units have mirrored this approach, implementing restrictive measures to safeguard the health of patients, staff, and the wider community. This paper explores the relevant legal provisions and ethical principles that guide medical decisions regarding restriction of liberty, before considering the suspension of leave from hospital that occurred in several mental health services in response to the pandemic. It reviews how existing ethical principles within the field of public health may support a better-informed decision-making process, should similar widespread restrictions be imposed again.

Sharing is caring: Ethical implications of transparent research in psychology.

The call for greater openness in research data is quickly growing in many scientific fields. Psychology as a field, however, still falls short in this regard. Research is vulnerable to human error, inaccurate interpretation, and reporting of study results, and decisions during the research process being biased toward favorable results. Despite the obligation to share data for verification and the importance of this practice for protecting against human error, many psychologists do not fulfill their ethical responsibility of sharing their research data. This has implications for the accurate and ethical dissemination of specific research findings and the scientific development of the field more broadly. Open science practices provide promising approaches to address the ethical issues of inaccurate reporting and false-positive results in psychological research literature that hinder scientific growth and ultimately violate several relevant ethical principles and standards from the American Psychological Association's (APA's) Ethical Principles of Psychologists Code of Conduct (APA, 2017). Still, current incentive structures in the field for publishing and professional advancement appear to induce hesitancy in applying these practices. With each of these considerations in mind, recommendations on how psychologists can ethically proceed through open science practices and incentive restructuring-in particular, data management, data and code sharing, study preregistration, and registered reports-are provided. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

AMEE Guide to ethical teaching in online medical education: AMEE Guide No. 146

The Covid-19 pandemic necessitated Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT): the sudden move of educational materials online. While ERT served its purpose, medical teachers are now faced with the long-term and complex demands of formal online teaching. One of these demands is ethical online teaching. Although ethical teaching is practiced in face-to-face situations, online teaching has new ethical issues that must be accommodated, and medical teachers who wish to teach online must be aware of these and need to teach ethically. This Guide leads the medical teacher through this maze of complex ethical issues to transform ERT into ethical online teaching. It begins by setting the context and needs and identifies the relevant fundamental ethical principles and issues. It then guides the medical teacher through the practical application of these ethical principles, covering course design and layout (including the curriculum document, implementation, on-screen layouts, material accessibility), methods of interaction (synchronous and asynchronous), feedback, supervision and counselling, deeper accessibility issues, issues specific to clinical teaching, and assessment. It then discusses course reviews (peer-review and student evaluations), student monitoring and analytics, and archiving. The Guide aims to be a useful tool for medical teachers to solidly ground their online teaching practices in ethical principles.

Donor advised funds: Ethical issues on the new frontier of philanthropy

AbstractThis paper analyzes critical ethical and legal issues related to the administration and use of Donor Advised Funds for charitable fundraising in American philanthropy. With the swift and profound reshaping of the philanthropic landscape caused by Donor Advised Funds, the mainstream charitable world continues to both digest how these changes affect their work and address the myriad of legal, ethical and donor/public relations issues that arise in connection with gifts to and distributions from them. This paper discusses the most relevant legal and ethical principles governing the sponsorship of, receipt from and contribution to Donor Advised Funds, sets forth the significant legal and ethical issues faced by each of these parties, and finally, puts forth recommendation for them to follow.

Considering a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for pediatric kidney transplant candidates.

The world continues to face the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective in protecting recipients, decreasing the risk of COVID-19 acquisition, transmission, hospitalization, and death. Transplant recipients may be at greater risk for severe SARS-CoV-2 infection. As a result, transplant programs have begun instituting mandates for COVID-19 vaccine for transplant candidacy. While the question of mandating COVID-19 vaccine for adult transplant candidates has garnered attention in the lay and academic press, these discussions have not explicitly addressed children who may be otherwise eligible for kidney transplants. In this paper we seek to examine the potential ethical justifications of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for pediatric kidney transplant candidacy through an examination of relevant ethical principles, analogous cases of the use of mandates, differences between adult and pediatric kidney transplant candidates, and the role of gatekeeping in transplant vaccine mandates. At present, it does not appear that pediatric kidney transplant centers are justified to institute a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for candidates. Finally, we will offer suggestions to be considered prior to the implementation of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Should Doctors Offer Biomarker Testing to Those Afraid to Develop Alzheimer's Dementia? : Applying the Method of Reflective Equilibrium for a Clinical Dilemma.

An increasing number of people seek medical attention for mild cognitive symptoms at older age, worried that they might develop Alzheimer's disease. Some clinical practice guidelines suggest offering biomarker testing in such cases, using a brain scan or a lumbar puncture, to improve diagnostic certainty about Alzheimer's disease and enable an earlier diagnosis. Critics, on the other hand, point out that there is no effective Alzheimer treatment available and argue that biomarker tests lack clinical validity. The debate on the ethical desirability of biomarker testing is currently polarized; advocates and opponents tend to focus on their own line of arguments. In this paper, we show how the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) can be used to systematically weigh the relevant arguments on both sides of the debate to decide whether to offer Alzheimer biomarker testing. In the tradition of RE, we reflect upon these arguments in light of their coherence with other argumentative elements, including relevant facts (e.g. on the clinical validity of the test), ethical principles, and theories on societal ideals or relevant concepts, such as autonomy. Our stance in the debate therefore rests upon previously set out in-depth arguments and reflects a wide societal perspective.

An Ethical Framework for Visitation of Inpatients Receiving Palliative Care in the COVID-19 Context

Human connection is universally important, particularly in the context of serious illness and at the end of life. The presence of close family and friends has many benefits when death is close. Hospital visitation restrictions during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic therefore warrant careful consideration to ensure equity, proportionality, and the minimization of harm. The Australian and New Zealand Society for Palliative Medicine COVID-19 Special Interest Group utilized the relevant ethical and public health principles, together with the existing disease outbreak literature and evolving COVID-19 knowledge, to generate a practical framework of visiting restrictions for inpatients receiving palliative and end-of-life care. Expert advice from an Infectious Diseases physician ensured relevance to community transmission dynamics. Three graded levels of visitor restrictions for inpatient settings are proposed, defining an appropriate level of minimum access. These depend upon the level of community transmission of COVID-19, the demand on health services, the potential COVID-19 status of the patient and visitors, and the imminence of the patient’s death. This framework represents a cohesive, considered, proportionate, and ethically robust approach to improve equity and consistency for inpatients receiving palliative care during the COVID-19 pandemic and may serve as a template for future disease outbreaks.