Research ethics in applied linguistics

Abstract

For many researchers in the social sciences, including those in applied linguistics, the term ethics evokes the bureaucratic process of fulfilling the requirements of an ethics review board (e.g., in the US, an Institutional Review Board, or IRB) as a preliminary step in conducting human subjects research. The expansion of ethics review boards into the social sciences in the early 2000s has led applied linguistics as a field to experience what Haggerty (2004) termed ethics creep, a simultaneous expansion and intensification of external regulation of research activities. The aims of these ethical review boards are: (a) to evaluate the types and risk of harm to participants as a result of research activities, (b) ensure that participants can give informed consent to be part of the research activities, and (c) provide oversight on researcher procedures to maintain participant anonymity/confidentiality (Haggerty, 2004).

Evaluating Cami AI Across SMAR Stages: Students’ Achievement and Perceptions in EFL Writing Instruction

“…The research adhered to ethical considerations by following research ethics guidelines proposed by Yaw et al (2023). These considerations included providing informed consent, which participants filled out during data collection; maintaining participant confidentiality by assigning pseudonyms for anonymity; promoting voluntary participation; ensuring no harm to participants, as approved by the ethics committee at the university where the research was conducted; and ensuring transparency in the presentation of research results.…”

Mixed-methods research in applied linguistics: Charting the progress through the second decade of the twenty-first century

“…The fourth limitation is that we did not address ethics in the data set. Considering the recent emphasis on ethics in AL research (see Yaw et al, 2023), it is timely to address ethical issues in MMR and how these issues might be exercised.…”

Discussions on the past, present, and future of quantitative research ethics in applied linguistics

“…(Wood, Yaw, and Sterling) This session examined research ethics training literature from the 1980s to 2022, using historical trends and materials to jumpstart discussions about current training practices. By tracing the development of research ethics training literature, an expansion can be noted in focus from ethical guidelines for informed consent in the 1980s to research methods textbooks with dedicated ethics chapters in the 2000s to exploration of micro-ethical decision points and QRPs in the 2010s and beyond (see Yaw et al, 2023).…”

“…Procedural, or macro-, ethics refers to human subjects researchers' navigation of the requirements of an ethics review board (i.e., the Institutional Review Board (IRB) in the US), whereas "ethics in practice", or micro-ethics, refers to the day-to-day researcher decisions that carry ethical implications. Prior to Kubanyiova's (2008) discussion of the distinction between the two perspectives, many of the conversations around research ethics in applied linguistics (AL) focused heavily on navigating the IRB (see Yaw et al, 2023).…”