CITI Registration and Ethics Casework SOCL 3633 Research Methods · Lab 3 · Midwestern State University

The five-item checklist

Items 1 to 3 are the three principles of the Belmont Report (1979). Items 4 and 5 come from the American Sociological Association (ASA) Code of Ethics (2018). In each case tab, you judge each item as violated, met, or unclear. The reference call and the reasoning appear after you choose.

Case A: The U.S. Public Health Service syphilis study at Tuskegee (1932 to 1972)

In 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service enrolled 600 Black men in Macon County, Alabama: 399 who had syphilis and 201 who did not. The men were told they were being treated for "bad blood." They were not told they had syphilis, and they were not treated for it. The goal was to observe what the disease does to the body when it is not treated. By the late 1940s penicillin was the standard treatment for syphilis, but the men still did not receive it. Untreated syphilis can damage the heart and the brain, can cause blindness and death, and can be passed to partners and children. The study continued until 1972, when news reports made it public.

Case B: Tearoom Trade (Laud Humphreys, 1970)

For his dissertation in sociology, Laud Humphreys studied men who had anonymous sex with other men in public restrooms in city parks in St. Louis during the 1960s. At the time, this behavior was a crime, and being exposed could cost a man his job, his marriage, and his place in the community. Humphreys acted as a lookout, which let him observe without revealing that he was a researcher. He wrote down the license plate numbers of men he observed and, through a contact with the police, found their names and home addresses. About a year later, after changing his appearance, he visited the men at home and interviewed them as part of what he presented as a health survey. Most of the men he observed were married and had children. Humphreys argued that the only harm in these encounters came from police activity, and his book challenged common beliefs about the men involved.

Case C: The obedience experiments (Stanley Milgram, 1961 to 1963)

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, recruited men from the New Haven area through newspaper ads and mail, and paid each $4.50. Each volunteer was told the study was about the effects of punishment on learning. The volunteer was told to give an electric shock to a "learner" every time the learner made a mistake, raising the voltage each time, from 15 volts up to 450 volts. The learner was an actor, and no shocks were real, but the volunteers did not know that. When volunteers hesitated, the experimenter told them to continue, ending with "You have no other choice, you must go on." In the first published study, 26 of 40 men gave the highest shock. Many showed severe stress: sweating, trembling, stuttering, and nervous laughter, and three had seizures. After the session, each volunteer was interviewed and met the learner, who was unharmed.

Lab 3 response sheet

Answer in complete sentences. Then assemble your answers into one block of text and paste it into the Lab 3 submission in D2L. Your answers stay on this page and are not sent anywhere until you paste them.

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