Social Value Of Research Research Articles

The Common Good According to Whom?

Abstract Alex John London’s new book, For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics highlights the fact that establishing just social arrangements is not only a matter of incentivizing popular will to act for the common good; it also requires filling in informational gaps about which policies, arrangements, and interventions will advance the basic interests of members in an equitable, effective and efficient manner. Promoting justice requires, in part, acquiring the knowledge for how to do so. In developing this point, London carefully traces these missteps in the main philosophical debates and then resuscitates the importance of questions of justice at the heart of research ethics. In doing so, it provides a transformative corrective for the field. This review critically examines one of the central pillars of London’s egalitarian research imperative approach: the way in which the social value of research is closely linked with minimizing uncertainty among reasonable experts.

ESTABLISHMENT OF A SUB-REGIONAL ETHICS COMMITTEE IN CENTRAL AFRICA TO ADDRESS THE NEEDS OF MULTICOUNTRY PROJECTS: AN OCEAC INITIATIVE

BackgroundThe Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, adopted by UNESCO, requires that governments establish National Ethics Committees (NECs) capable of reviewing ethical and scientific aspects on research involving human...

On the Role of Values in Social Research: Weber Vindicated?

Weber's proposal that social science should aim to be value neutral is now widely rejected. However, I argue that his position was more sophisticated than is generally recognised, and that it is for the most part sound. Clarification of his position is provided, along with an outline of the reasons why it came to be rejected. I suggest that these are, for the most part, based upon misconceptions. I also demonstrate that there are fundamental problems with any notion of normative sociology, ones that are rarely addressed and have not been resolved.

The Social Value of Health Research and the Worst Off.

In this article we argue that the social value of health research should be conceptualized as a function of both the expected benefits of the research and the priority that the beneficiaries deserve. People deserve greater priority the worse off they are. This conception of social value can be applied for at least two important purposes: (1) in health research priority setting when research funders, policy-makers, or researchers decide between alternative research projects; and (2) in evaluating the ethics of proposed research proposals when research ethics committees (RECs) assess whether the social value of the research is sufficient to justify the risks and burdens to research participants and others. In assessing how far a proposed research project will advance the interests of people who are more disadvantaged, research priority setters and RECs should examine (at least) the diseases that the research targets and the type of research. Just as certain diseases impose a greater burden on people who are more disadvantaged, so certain types of intervention and forms of research are more likely to benefit people who are more disadvantaged. We outline which populations are likely to be representative of the global worst off and identify what types of health research, and which disease categories, are priorities for these populations.

Ethical challenges of randomized violence intervention trials: Examining the SHARE intervention in Rakai, Uganda.

We identify complexities encountered, including unanticipated crossover between trial arms and inadequate 'standard of care' violence services, during a cluster randomized trial (CRT) of a community-level intimate partner violence (IPV) and HIV prevention intervention in Uganda. Concepts in public health ethics - beneficence, social value of research, fairness, standard of care, and researcher responsibilities for post-trial benefits - are used to critically reflect on lessons learned and guide discussion on practical and ethical challenges of violence intervention CRTs. Existing ethical guidelines provide incomplete guidance for responding to unexpected crossover in CRTs providing IPV services. We struggled to balance duty of care with upholding trial integrity, and identifying and providing appropriate standard of care. While we ultimately offered short-term IPV services to controls, we faced additional challenges related to sustaining services beyond the 'short-term' and post-trial. Studies evaluating community-level violence interventions, including those combined with HIV reduction strategies, are limited yet critical for developing evidence-based approaches for effectively preventing IPV. Although CRTs are a promising design, further guidance is needed to implement trials that avoid introducing tensions between validity of findings, researchers' responsibilities to protect participants, and equitable distribution of CRT benefits.

Research “Values” in the Humanities: Funding Policies, Evaluation, and Cultural Resources. Some Introductory Remarks

In her capacity as guest editor, the author introduces a set of essays examining the trends, risks, needs, pressures, and prospects of the humanities after recent reforms to tertiary education throughout Europe. By focusing on the educational, cultural, and social value of research in the humanities, which also provide economic and democratic benefits, this special issue focuses on three key topics: “funding policies”, “evaluation”, and “cultural resources”. This article provides the background to the subject matter (Section 1); a reflection on the controversial issues of quality control, measures of research productivity, and funding decisions as key drivers changing the humanities (Section 2); an overview of the current difficulties and prospects for “modernizing” the humanities (Section 3); the rationale for this special issue (Section 4); the context and a synopsis of the contributions, showing how and why these position papers by members of the humanities cluster of the Academia Europaea can provide this debate with new tools of analysis and diagnosis (Section 5). Finally, the concluding remarks highlight the Academia Europaea’s actions for the humanities (Section 6).

The Social Value of Research: Conflicts between science, society, and individuals

The Social Value of Research: Conflicts between science, society, and individuals

Viewpoint: Helping the Public see the Value of Social Research using Social Media

Viewpoint: Helping the Public see the Value of Social Research using Social Media

Increasing Enrollment in Drug Trials: The Need for Greater Transparency About the Social Value of Research in Recruitment Efforts

“Clinical trials and the consequent benefits to society are in jeopardy in the United States because of a decline in the ability to recruit patients in a timely manner to trials addressing key clinical issues.”1 So states a recent commentary in a leading medical journal, reflecting widespread concern in the research community about recruiting sufficient numbers of people into clinical trials. Anyone who cares about medical progress should share this concern. What, then, is to be done about it? The authors, reflecting discussions at a US National Institutes of Health sponsored workshop convened to address recruitment challenges, call for, among other things, a “national campaign to increase public awareness and participation in clinical trials” in hopes that it will establish research participation “as a valued contribution to the general public.”1 Bolstering their call is scholarship contending that people have an obligation to participate in clinical research.2–4

Citations, impact factors and shady publication practices: how should the lasting clinical and social value of research really be measured?

Department of Healthcare and Nursing Science, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands Keywords: citation rates, impact factors, research findings, research uptake, cancer care. Readers of this joumal will be aware of the increasing importance of publication outputs for both individual researchers or clinicians and the academie or clinical institutions with which they are affiliated. There is increasing concern that many of the bibliometrie analyses being used to measure publication outputs or 'research excellence' defined by such means are being used in ways for which they were never intended however (Ketefian

Assessing the social value of research involving minimal risks :who is accountable?

Assessing the social value of research involving minimal risks :who is accountable?

Politics, knowledge and objectivity in sociology of education: a response to the case for ‘ethical reflexivity’ by Gewirtz and Cribb

The present article examines the relationship between political values and social research, with particular reference to the case for ethical reflexivity in sociology of education put forward by Gewirtz and Cribb. It is argued that their case for such reflexivity is flawed by conceptual imprecision and over‐determination of the links between value commitments, knowledge and the political implications of research. Drawing on a case study of a controversy in sociology of education, combined with a more discriminating conceptual analysis of political values in social research, it is suggested that the Gewirtz–Cribb ‘manifesto’ for routine ethical reflexivity may be inefficient and impractical. An alternative way of thinking about political reflexivity in sociology of education is offered, as are some possible avenues of philosophical resolution between the main protagonists of the longstanding debate on ‘what to do about values’ in sociology of education.

Differing to agree: a reply to Hammersley and Abraham

In this paper Gewirtz and Cribb offer a response to Hammersley and Abraham's criticisms of their arguments about the place of values in social research published in this issue of BJSE. In doing so, they make clear that most of the positions that Hammersley and Abraham attribute to them are ones that they do not identify with and that, like Hammersley and Abraham, they would reject. In order to further clarify and specify their own position, Gewirtz and Cribb argue that: their advocacy of ethical reflexivity rests on the assumption that there are many incompatible sets of values in play within even a single vantage point; researchers should sometimes take an interest in knowledge use although they should not always be required to do so; and, whilst at the level of propositions it is always possible to abstract out and distinguish between factual claims and value claims, at the level of practice there can be significant resonances and linkages between the two, so it is important to be ethically reflexive about these entanglements. Finally, the authors agree that values should not be seen purely as a source of contamination but that attention to values can help to underpin ‘objectivity’.

What to do about values in social research: the case for ethical reflexivity in the sociology of education

This paper is intended as a contribution to the longstanding debate about the best way of handling value judgements in social research. In it we make a case for more ‘ethical reflexivity’ in the sociology of education and argue that a systematic attention to value questions should be viewed as a taken‐for‐granted component of methodological rigour. We elucidate what we mean by ethical reflexivity, why we think it is important and suggest what it entails in practice. Our arguments are developed through a discussion of, and in contrast to, Martyn Hammersley’s analysis of the role of values in social research. The central problematic that the paper addresses is the tension between, on the one hand, the goal of insulating the research process from ‘value bias’ and, on the other hand, the goal of contributing to political and social change through research. We suggest that the reason for the intractability of the problem of values in social research is a persistent failure to recognise that, in practice, these two goals are inseparable. We argue that rigour in research demands that both these goals are taken seriously and we set out some of the challenges involved in trying to combine them.

4 - Social Value of Research and Technical Skills: Does It Justify Investment in Higher Education for Development?

Evidence assembled from household surveys collected from 1985 and 1998 from Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and South Africa indicates that higher wages compensate individuals in these African countries for enrolling in school. It is commonly believed that wage returns to schooling are highest at the primary levels and decrease thereafter at higher school levels, but the data from Africa summarized here indicate the opposite, with private wage returns being high- est at the secondary and higher education levels. There appear to be sufficient financial incentives today to motivate students to enroll in higher education, and any public subsidies should be allocated only to those students who come from poor families and whose parents are relatively least educated, relative to their generation. If students in higher education in Africa from upper-income families paid tuitions which were equal to half the public subsidies for their schooling, these revenues would finance fellowships for disadvantaged stu- dents and also provide the resources and incentives to expand higher education into those fields where trained manpower is scarcest today in Africa. They would thus create the conditions for greater self-governance of higher educa- tion while fostering a responsible separation from political power.

Positivism, Prejudice and Progress in the Sociology of Education: who's afraid of values?

This article is a response to Hammersley's allegations that my discussion of positivism and differentiation-polarisation theory (d-p), previously published in this journal, was misguided, incoherent and prejudiced against positivism. I refute those allegations by demonstrating that Hammersley has either misunderstood or misrepresented my position. Furthermore, by revealing inconsistencies in Hammersley's arguments about positivism and d-p I expose his incoherencies and prejudices regarding the role of political values in social research. Finally and constructively, I suggest that the 'enlightenment' aspect of the 'political arithmetic' tradition has much to recommend it as a framework for progress in sociology of education.

Intellectual Strengths in Culturally Different Groups: An Eskimo Illustration

The furor unleashed by Jensen's (1969) suggestion of a genetic explanation for the lower performance of Blacks on intelligence tests has led to substantial doubt about the social value of research on racial differences in cognitive abilities. Using the Eskimo as an illustration, this paper argues that such research, if based on a multi-ability model of intelligence such as the structure of intellect (Guilford, 1967), could have substantial social value. First, it might identify cognitive strengths of culturally different groups. Second, it might suggest occupational and educational areas where such strengths could be used to advantage.