A Recap of the SIGCHI Research Ethics Panel Discussion at CHI 2017

The ACM SIGCHI Research Ethics Committee will once again be hosting a panel on research ethics at CHI 2018. Join us for the discussion on Tuesday 24th April, room 514B.

As we prepare for this discussion, it is a good time to recap the conversation we had 12 months ago about ethics and human-computer interaction research. The SIGCHI Research Ethics Committee held its first town hall meeting at the 2017 CHI conference in Denver. The meeting, a panel discussion chaired by Amy Bruckman, was well-attended, with many people lining up to the microphone to share their experiences or to provoke discussion with insightful questions. Along with Amy, five other members of the ethics committee joined the panel — Casey Fiesler, Chris Frauenberger, Melissa Densmore, Cosmin Munteanu, and Jenny Waycott. The main purpose of the event was to provide an opportunity for all present to share their concerns about ethical issues they are grappling with in their research and to discuss, as a group, how we might support each other in responding to these issues.

To kick off proceedings, the committee posed three main questions to the audience:

1) What ethical issues are you currently concerned about?

2) Are there any ACM policies and procedures related to ethics that you think could be improved?

3) What steps can we as a community take to facilitate conversations about ethics and our policies and procedures surrounding ethics?

What ethical issues are you currently concerned about?

Audience members raised concerns about conflating the paper review process prior to publication and the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process (or equivalent), which differs across institutions. In the field of human-computer interaction people come from academia and industry, and from a range of counties where rules and guidelines about research ethics vary. In the United States all research involving human subjects must be approved by an IRB and similar review processes exist in many other countries. In some jurisdictions, a formal review may not be required. If the research has been formally approved by an institutional committee, should peer reviewers still have the opportunity or obligation to express concern about the research ethics in a paper they are reviewing? As one audience member asked: if the IRB process approves the research but a paper reviewer disapproves of the way the research was conducted, does the reviewer get the opportunity to prevent the paper being accepted?

Audience members and panellists varied in their responses to this question, but there was general agreement that reviewers should have the opportunity to raise concerns about ethics. That is, while we should respect the outcome of any review process the research has gone through, reviewers should also have the opportunity to say “I need more discussion about this to feel comfortable about accepting this for publication”. This is a timely issue, given growing awareness about the potential harms and privacy breaches that can arise when we research, design, and implement new technologies.

Panellist Chris Frauenberger agreed: Reviewers have a place to raise questions. There is a difference between procedural research ethics (i.e., getting a priori approval of the research) and research in practice. In HCI research we may go to places we don’t know that we’re going to beforehand — in other words, the research process can be difficult to predict and plan for. Chris noted that he would strongly speak in favour of reviewers raising questions when they see something in a paper that raises cause for concern.

While audience members were worried that this could result in a paper being rejected on the grounds of ethics, panellist Cosmin Munteanu noted that this was already happening, and may be common practice in other disciplines. He also noted that peer feedback about ethics can be helpful. When reviewers raise questions about ethics, authors are encouraged to consider how their research aligns with norms and expectations and how they might explain their processes more carefully in future drafts to ensure that questions about ethical conduct are no longer prominent.

A concern raised by Michael Muller, however, is that we need to appreciate the varied contexts in which our research is conducted. Norms and expectations vary across academic and cultural contexts: “We do not all have the same understanding of ethics and we cannot always impose our own cultural standards on others.”

ACM policies and procedures

Audience members noted that the ethics review process is about compliance with existing policy. However, policy is updated sporadically. Our research — especially in a field moving as fast as HCI — often uncovers ethical issues that take some time to get into policy. Raising these issues during the paper review process can be a good way to identify new areas of concern.

Amy noted that, at the time of this discussion, the ACM code of conduct was under revision. Since the 2017 town hall meeting, a consultation process took place to ensure the ACM community had the opportunity to comment on the changes to the ACM code. Amy urged everyone in the community to read the ACM ethics draft and contribute. It only gets updated once a decade but research ethics changes much faster than that. Details about the ACM code of ethics can be found here.

What can the SIGCHI community do to improve policy and procedures around research ethics?

The audience and panellists suggested the following strategies so we can continue to facilitate conversations and awareness of issues around ethics:

· Ethics education is important. We need to ensure our students and junior research staff are trained to understand the principles, procedures, and complexities of conducting ethical research.

· If your institution has an ethics review board, consider joining it. This is especially important if you are concerned about how the institution’s review board deals with ethics or if there is limited understanding of human-computer interaction research within your institution.

· The SIGCHI Research Ethics Committee intends to maintain resources and a blog for community members to share and reflect on ethical challenges they have faced. We can accept anonymous contributions to provide a safe environment for this discussion.

· Everyone who is concerned about ethics in HCI research can discuss the issues with our colleagues and spread the word that ethics matters.

Post-script: What is the SIGCHI Research Ethics Committee doing now?

Since the town hall meeting last year, the SIGCHI Research Ethics Committee has contacted conference program chairs to advise them that we are available as a resource for consultation should any issues around research ethics arise during the program committee meetings. Our role is to provide an independent review and advice about the issues raised. In the past 12 months, we have been asked to review papers sent to us because of concerns about issues such as anonymization, the potential impact of publishing studies that might negatively affect vulnerable groups, and online research breaching Terms of Service (which we have discussed in a previous post on Medium). None of the papers discussed with us were rejected on the grounds of ethics but, in some cases, authors were asked to provide more detail about the processes followed. We will continue to offer this service going forward.

Continuing the conversation

Join us at the Research Ethics for HCI Roundtable Discussion at CHI 2018 on Tuesday 24th April, room 514B.

Follow us on Twitter: @sigchiethics

Join the Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/866225810172460/

The committee can be contacted on chi-research-ethics@acm.org. Please get in touch if you are interested in writing a blog post.