Ethical Standards in Human Research

When a statistical study uses human participants, both ethics and the law require researchers to protect their safety. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services oversees federal regulations for research studies. Research institutions must ensure the safety of all human subjects.

Key protections mandated by law include minimizing risks to participants, obtaining informed consent, and guarding collected data to protect privacy. These ideas may seem fundamental, but they can be difficult to verify in practice. For example, removing a participant's name may not be enough if their identity could be discovered from the remaining data.

Which of the following is a key protection mandated by law for human research?

Sometimes violations of ethics are not as easy to spot as outright fraud. Researchers may stop collecting data once they have just enough to prove what they hoped to prove, or they may alter data in existing datasets. Professional organizations like the American Statistical Association define expectations for researchers, and there are laws in the federal code about the use of research data.