New Wagner Web Site Offers Forum for Research Ethics

By Robert Polner

Over the past quarter century, social scientists have worked to quantify the effects of government social programs. For example, changes in federal job training programs and the welfare system have been accompanied by studies in which different groups of people receive different levels of those services. Outcomes such as earnings and employment can then be monitored. But the subjects are often members of vulnerable or disempowered populations—single mothers, children in poor families, people with limited education, among others.

Even so, there has been little public debate on research ethics or even the fact that federal regulations governing the treatment of “human research subjects”—prompted by controversial medical experiments of years past—do not usually apply to these kinds of social program evaluations.

Jan Blustein first wondered why in 2000, while teaching a course in social program evaluation at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She is associate professor of health policy at Wagner and associate professor of medicine at the School of Medicine.

“I was intrigued by this paucity of public discussion,” she later wrote in the Journal of Public Policy Analysis and Management, “because I am a physician, and my medical training included a substantial component on research ethics.”

Blustein began research on the question, attended national meetings, and volunteered to join the University Committee on Activities Involving Human Subjects, NYU’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), of which she is now co-chair. Earlier this year, she launched an online resource for applied social scientists dubbed the “IRB Initiative” (www.wagner.nyu.edu/irb/).

As visitors to the site will learn, social scientists around the country are confused and even vexed by matters of professional ethics. Many are uncertain where to draw the line between projects that need Institutional Review Board clearance and projects which do not, as well as their obligations under federal regulations governing research involving human subjects. The regulations date back to the 1970s.

Blustein’s IRB Initiative addresses this knowledge and dialogue gap in the applied social science community, and offers a forum on professional research ethics. The Web site includes annotated links to key organizations, identifies various alternative policies and recommendations, and offers links about codes of ethics from professional organizations.

Blustein is careful to separate her service on NYU’s IRB from the initiative.

“My work on the IRB aims to protect human subjects and is informed by the federal regulations under the guidance of the NYU administration,” she says. “My work on the website is scholarly inquiry. It aims to stimulate debate about whether current arrangements work, and how the system might be improved.”