Two NIU faculty receive federal funds
for computer-based research ethics projects

by Mark McGowan

Scholarly research involving human subjects has inherent risks, even if the study has nothing to do with medicine or disease.

“Over the last couple years,” said Jeffrey Hecht, chair of NIU’s Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment, “folks who do research with human subjects have had a number of very notable, very public kinds of incidents where things haven’t gone the way they should have. Patients have died. Data has been compromised.”

Federal officials responded with policies trying to oversee the process, later withdrawn after causing a furor in Congress. Nonetheless, Hecht said, identical or similar legislation eventually will become law.

In the meantime, however, the government is granting money to universities to create training modules for people involved in research. “The idea that people ought to be trained kind of caught on,” he said.

Hecht and Murali Krishnamurthi, director of the NIU Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center, each have received $25,000 for separate projects. The university is matching the funds.

“Along the way, someone figured out that you can’t expect people to act in certain ethical ways if you don’t train them and teach them what the ethics are about,” Hecht said.

“If you’re running a grant and you hire a secretary to do your budget, what ethical concerns does your secretary need to worry about? If you hire a grad assistant, or a post-doc researcher, and you decide to publish or co-publish with them, how do you work with them in a way that’s ethically responsible?”

Hecht’s project – “RCR For the Rest of Us” – will become a CD-Rom packed with information relative to the 11 specific areas of concern in conducting responsible research, which include humans, animals, money, security and laws.

He and his grad students will gather material from subject matter experts over the next year and transform it into the computer-driven tutorial.

“It’ll be a self-paced CD type of project that a prospective researcher or grad student could sit down with and, in a fairly short time, learn about these 11 areas. It’ll give them an overview and enough of a sense that their awareness has been raised and they’re now ready to proceed,” he said.

“We’re not trying to find a cure for cancer. We’re trying to talk with the faculty, the grad students and the support staff and anyone else who would touch research so they’re aware of the factors touching research.”

The “Rest of Us” portion of his project’s title refers to institutions such as NIU, where much of the research is not related to health care.

“In the bio-medical community, they tend to think only of the physical risks. In a medical study, if I’m going to take blood from you, there’s a certain protocol I’ve got to follow: Do it right. Don’t hurt you,” he said. “But what are the kinds of things I need to do to protect you from an interview? Risk to reputation. Risk to employment. Risk to psychological health. There are risks.”

Krishnamurthi’s project – “Online Decision Instruction on Data Integrity” – will guide its online users through hypothetical situations and allow them to make choices.

Scenarios might touch on how data is collected, used, released, archived or documented for research purposes. After the computer poses a question, and a decision is made, the computer will present the consequences of that action – and the dilemmas.

“Sometimes researchers may have the right intention, but may not be aware of all the issues related to data integrity,” Krishnamurthi said. “Who really owns the data? If someone is involved in a research project, and they leave the project, do they still have some rights? Is somebody sponsoring it? Some corporation? Do they have any rights? Does NIU?”

The program lets researchers “not just read about, but experience” the decision-making process, he said.

“It’s not just a Web site or documentation. There’s a lot of information available already on research integrity,” he said. “This is something more interactive, more interesting, and can be made available to everybody, from graduate students to researchers. They have to experience it in some way to understand research data-related dilemmas.”

Krishnamurthi is developing situations through discussions with NIU specialists in areas such as biology, sociology, education and engineering as well as some content experts from outside the university.

He also will study cases of data issues, such as the recent reports that the organizational culture at NASA prevented the agency from learning the mistakes of the 1986 Challenger explosion and applying that knowledge before the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Meanwhile, Hecht said, NIU is ahead of the game and gaining ground.

Members of the university’s Responsible Conduct of Scholarship committee have met, debated, took input and hatched a plan for educating researchers here. The committee also produced a guidebook describing the areas of research and implementation of the conduct guidelines.

“Our charge is to work with members of the university community to make sure everyone is trained. We’re not waiting for the federal government to come up with legislation. We’re thinking about the issues ahead of time and trying to craft our own rules,” Hecht said.

“Being able to develop this training material just makes it easier to do, and hit a wider audience in greater depth.”

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