Subjects and Scholars’ Views on the Ethics of Political Science Field Experiments

Recent controversies raise questions regarding the ethics of political science field experiments. I present here results from a public opinion survey in which subjects and scholars evaluated the acceptability of two hypothetical field experiments. In the survey, the designs were randomly varied to i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPerspectives on politics Vol. 16; no. 3; pp. 739 - 750
Main Author Desposato, Scott
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.09.2018
Subjects
Ambiguity
Deception
Disputes
Elections
Ethics
Experiments
Informed consent
Intellectuals
Laboratories
Political science
Public opinion
Public opinion surveys
Reflection
Respondents
United States > US
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Summary:Recent controversies raise questions regarding the ethics of political science field experiments. I present here results from a public opinion survey in which subjects and scholars evaluated the acceptability of two hypothetical field experiments. In the survey, the designs were randomly varied to identify the most controversial features. Both scholars and subjects reacted negatively to deception and to experiments without informed consent, especially when the research aims were normatively ambiguous. In some cases, half of the respondents reported that they would rather not be in a typical field experiment without their consent.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
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ISSN:1537-5927
1541-0986
DOI:10.1017/S1537592717004297