Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 20:13:08 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi-AT-statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: (COVERAGE)Association of Internet Researchers Conference 


Dear lists,

[Hi, I thought --this might interest you --the Association of Internet
Researchers discussed "Online Research Ethics Lacking" --any meaningful 
guidelines. Thank you.-Arun]
========================================================================
>From Friday's AP newswire:
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:55 p.m. ET

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) -- Don't get too comfortable with your online 
support group. A researcher may be lurking, recording your 
outpourings in the name of science.

In fact, a researcher posing as a member of the support group may be 
posting comments simply to observe the reaction from participants.

As more researchers turn to the Internet for behavioral studies, 
there is growing concern about the potential harm to online users 
unaware that they have become research subjects when they discuss 
diseases, marital problems and sexual identity crises.

Online research ethics -- specifically, the lack of any meaningful 
guidelines -- was one of the chief topics of discussion this week at 
the inaugural meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers.

``We're waiting for a major lawsuit,'' said Sarina Chen, professor of 
communications at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. 
``Many people consider downloading data from the Internet `content 
analysis.' That's very naive.''

She ought to know: She said she almost lost her job when participants 
in a support group for eating disorders complained to her superiors 
about the tone of some postings that one of her students had made as 
part of a class assignment.

Failing to get consent before monitoring Internet chat rooms and 
other discussion forums amounts to an invasion of privacy and can 
make participants more guarded in their dealings with one another, 
Chen said.

In more extreme cases, other researchers warned, a posting inserted 
by a researcher can shift the nature of discussion and prompt 
participants to take action they otherwise would not.

Barbara Lackritz, a leukemia survivor from St. Louis who runs more 
than two dozen cancer support groups, said researchers have been 
dropping in with increased frequency.

``It's very frustrating,'' she said in a telephone interview. ``We 
have all kinds of researchers, from kids who are in high school to 
master's degree candidates who want to do a thesis.''

Researchers who want to monitor her discussion groups often get 
permission first from group moderators, she said. But too often, she 
said, researchers don't ask, and ``think we're a slab of people 
waiting to do research for them.''

She said one support-group participant who hadn't told his friends, 
family and neighbors about his cancer started getting phone calls all 
of a sudden from people saying, ``I'm sorry.'' He then learned that a 
researcher had posted his full name and diagnosis on a Web site.

Now that participant uses a pseudonym.

``He was furious,'' Lackritz said. ``In the long run, it hurt him 
financially and in his relationships with family.''

Federal law and university review boards generally prohibit 
experiments on humans without consent, though some observations in 
public settings are acceptable.

But where do you draw the line between public and private on the 
Internet? Many discussion groups are open to the public, but 
participants generally assume that fellow members join because they 
have similar interests or concerns.

That makes such forums less like a public square and more like 
someone's living room, said Amy Bruckman, a professor of computing at 
Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Other researchers, however, believe they can monitor those 
discussions as long as they do not identify subjects in research 
papers.

``It's more important how data is analyzed and disseminated than how 
it is gathered,'' said Joseph Walther, professor of communications, 
psychology and information technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic 
Institute in Troy, N.Y.

Storm King, a Springfield, Mass., psychologist and spokesman for the 
International Society for Mental Health Online, said seeking consent 
can actually cause participants to clam up, making observations of 
natural settings more difficult.

The Association of Internet Researchers will probably decide Sunday 
to form a task force to draft guidelines by next year's meeting, said 
Stephen Jones, the group's president.

David Snowball, professor of speech communication at Augustana 
College in Rock Island, Ill., said he was surprised when students 
proposed to eavesdrop on a support group and create fake traumas for 
the group to consider.

He was even more surprised when he learned the students got the idea 
from other faculty members, who believed the practice was OK because 
participants would probably never know.

``The online world is still new and opens up all sorts of ways of 
doing research,'' said Charles Ess, a professor in cultural studies 
at Drury University in Springfield, Mo. ``It's much easier to lurk in 
a chat room undetected than it is to stand in a room and take notes.''

On the Net: http://aoir.org
------------------------------------------------------------



















     --- from list technology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---