The Ethics of Randomization in Social Science Experiments

社会科学实验中随机化的伦理

• 批准号: 2316155
• 负责人: Tara Slough
• 金额: $ 39.97万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-01-01 至 2025-12-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2316155&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Ethics; Randomization; Social; Science; Experiments

Over the past twenty years, randomized experiments have become increasingly common in the social sciences. They involve randomly assigning research participants to an experimental group or condition. While randomization can be a measure for improving data quality, it is also a means of distributing harms and benefits of those experimental conditions to research participants and their communities. This project will examine the question of when it is ethical to determine through random assignment which participants receive a given treatment in social science experiments. By seeking to answer this question, the project will generate new tools for social scientists who are considering randomized experiments. The goal of these tools is to offer greater protections to individuals and communities that are participants in research experiments.This project consists of three research objectives. First, a set of formal (mathematical) models will be developed to analyze the welfare consequences of random and non-random methods for research participant treatment assignment. While formalization is rare in the literature on the ethics of human subjects research, these models offer a new, more direct mapping between experimental design decisions regarding how treatment is assigned and the potential ethical implications of these decisions. The research team will create models that are informed by the expected harms and benefits to research participants. The second research objective is to measure anticipated benefits and harms of social science or policy interventions by adapting and field-testing methods that reveal prospective research participants’ expectations. This testing will occur in the context of two field experiments. The tools developed through the project will enable researchers to measure expected harms and benefits when designing experiments. The final research objective takes both tools, the formal models and the measures of expected harms and benefits, to create new pedagogical materials that incorporate ethics formally into experimental research design.This project is funded through the ER2 program by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在过去的二十年中，随机实验在社会科学中变得越来越普遍。他们涉及将研究参与者随机分配到实验组或状况。尽管随机化可以是提高数据质量的衡量标准，但它也是将这些实验条件的危害和益处分配给研究参与者及其社区的一种手段。该项目将研究何时通过随机分配来确定参与者在社会科学实验中获得给定治疗方法的问题。通过寻求回答这个问题，该项目将为考虑随机实验的社会科学家生成新的工具。这些工具的目的是为研究实验的参与者提供更大的保护。该项目由三个研究目标组成。首先，将开发一组正式（数学）模型，以分析研究参与者治疗分配的随机和非随机方法的福利后果。尽管关于人类受试者研究伦理学的文献，形式化很少见，但这些模型在实验设计决策之间提供了有关治疗方式的新的，更直接的映射，以及这些决策的潜在伦理含义。研究团队将创建模型，这些模型受到研究参与者的预期危害和利益的信息。第二个研究目标是通过适应和现场测试方法来衡量社会科学或政策干预的预期收益和危害，从而揭示了潜在的研究参与者的期望。该测试将在两个现场实验的背景下进行。通过该项目开发的工具将使研究人员在设计实验时能够衡量预期的危害和收益。最终的研究目标同时采用工具，正式模型和预期危害和收益的措施，创建新的教学材料，将道德的正式纳入实验研究设计中。该项目由社会，行为和经济科学局通过ER2计划资助，本奖项奖旨在通过评估NSF的法规范围来审查NSF的任务，并通过评估范围来表现出色的支持者，并概述了基金会的支持。