Life Scientists, Society, and Ethics
Understanding Scientists' Views on Societal and Ethical Considerations in the Life Sciences
As research on fundamental biological processes moves forward, more questions are raised about ethical, legal, social, and policy issues, challenging society's views and existing regulatory structures. In order to address these issues, SCBE is developing a new service to collaboratively resolve researchers' questions. (More information). To better inform the development of this service we conducted a pilot survey, which illustrated the need for further research. We decided to use a multi-method approach to explore how and what life science researchers think about the societal and ethical considerations related to life science research. We will be using the results of phone interviews and focus groups to develop a multi-instutitional national survey. The data from this study will facilitate strategies to strengthen the relationship between science and biomedical ethics.
Pilot Survey
We identified faculty, research staff, post-docs, and grad students doing genetics research at Stanford University. The names were obtained from publically available websites. We randomly selected 150 names to survey.
Interviews
We created a master list of names of life science researchers at Stanford University from publically available websites. We used stratified random sampling to identify 20 researchers for semi-structured interviews. The sample included four faculty members, four instructors, four research staff, four post-doctoral fellows, and four graduate students. Our final sample included 16 researchers.
We are in the process of analyzing the data using MaxQDA, a qualitative software tool. We will be presenting preliminary results at the upcoming American Society for Human Genetics (ASHG) annual meeting.
Focus Groups
Using the same list and sampling process as the phone interviews, we invited 10 graduate students, 7 post-doctoral fellows, 12 faculty and senior research staff to participate in four focus groups. A total of 25 people participated. We have just finished conducting the groups and will shortly begin analysis of the data.
Multi-institutional National Survey
We are developing a survey to be sent to 2,500 researchers at Stanford University and six other research universities in the U.S. We are using stratified random sampling to identify 500 Stanford researchers. The six other universities were selected from a subset of the NIH's 2004 list of top 100 award receipients.
Project Members
Jen McCormick, PhD
Former Post-Doctoral Fellow, Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics
Angie Boyce
Former Program Manager, CIRGE
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