creators_name: Vinson, Norman G. creators_name: Singer, Janice A. creators_id: norm.vinson@acm.org creators_id: janice.singer@gmail.com editors_name: Shull, Forrest editors_name: Sjøberg, Dag editors_name: Singer, Janice A. editors_id: 1 editors_id: 2 editors_id: 3 type: bookchapter datestamp: 2009-12-19 12:21:13 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:57:34 metadata_visibility: show title: A Practical Guide to Ethical Research Involving Humans ispublished: pub subjects: phil-ethics full_text_status: public keywords: Research ethics, software engineering, human subjects research abstract: The popularity of empirical methods in software engineering research is on the rise. Surveys, experiments, metrics, case studies, and field studies are examples of empirical methods used to investigate both software engineering processes and products. The increased application of such methods has also brought about an increase in discussions about adapting these methods to the particularities of software engineering. In contrast, the ethical issues raised by empirical methods have received little attention in the software engineering literature. In this chapter, we introduce four ethics principles of primary importance for conducting ethical research. We additionally discuss and provide examples of applying these principles in the context of ethics review. date: 2008 date_type: published publication: Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering publisher: Springer pagerange: 229-256 refereed: TRUE referencetext: ACM Executive Council. (1993). ACM code of ethics and professional conduct. Communications of the ACM, 36(2), 99–105. http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html American Anthropological Association. (2004). Statement on Ethnography and Institutional Review Boards. http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/index.htm American Psychological Association. (2002). Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. http://www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html Anderson, R. E., Johnson, D. 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NCEHR Communiqué, 12(2), 35–36. Worchel, S. & Cooper, J. (1979). Understanding Social Psychology, Revised Edition. Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press. Wright, D. R. (2006). Research ethics and computer science: an unconsummated marriage. In Proceedings of SIGDOC ‘06, Myrtle Beach, SC, USA. citation: Vinson, Norman G. and Singer, Janice A. (2008) A Practical Guide to Ethical Research Involving Humans. [Book Chapter] document_url: http://cogprints.org/6740/1/vinson_2008.pdf