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This scoping review maps research ethics and integrity challenges and best practices encountered by research actors in the DACH countries (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), including researchers, funders, publishers, research ethics committees, and policymakers, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic brought research and, in turn, research ethics and integrity, into public focus. This review identified challenges related to changing research environments, diversity in research, publication and dissemination trends, scientific literacy and trust in science, recruitment, research redundancy and study termination, placebo and human challenge studies, data management, and informed consent. These challenges are linked to two crucial factors: first, actors in the DACH research ecosystem lacked a sound knowledge base to assess the risks and benefits of research during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, researchers in the DACH region faced pressure from policymakers, funders, and the public to generate relevant, timely, and consistent findings to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, this review highlights best practices to mitigate the effects of future crises on research ethics and integrity, including enhanced cooperation among actors, continuous ethics assessments, and support for public scientific literacy.

The COVID-19 pandemic touched off an unprecedented search for vaccines and treatments. Without question, the development of vaccines to prevent COVID-19 was an enormous scientific accomplishment. Further, the RECOVERY and Solidarity trials identified effective treatments for COVID-19. But all was not success. The urgent need for COVID-19 prevention and treatment fueled an embrace of risks--to research participants and to the reliability of the science itself--as allegedly necessary costs to speed scientific progress. Scientists and (even) ethicists supported overturning longstanding norms protecting healthy volunteers in human challenge trials to speed vaccine development, but these trials led to no vaccines. Physicians, with the approval of research ethics committees, designed hundreds of unblinded, single-center clinical trials at high risk of bias to speed the identification of new treatments. But these clinical trials led to no treatments. The lesson for future pandemics is that the acceptance of greater risks to participants or science does not reliably lead to progress. We are better served by science that upholds the highest ethical and methodological standards.

Global health emergencies often lead to a proliferation of health-related research and resultant data, which is shared across borders to help control the outbreak of disease and support decision-making regarding public health interventions. However, efforts to share data can be hindered by diverse international ethical and legal frameworks. The frameworks aim to govern coordinated processing, sharing and transfer of health data across borders thus placing burdens on researchers who are willing or obligated to share data. In this paper, we investigate ethical values and legal principles that can be applied to ensure a more streamlined approach in the governance of cross-border health data sharing during global health emergencies. A scoping review approach was used to better understand emerging evidence about issues related to the ethical and legal governance of cross-border health data sharing. We first highlight the challenges of sharing health data across borders. We then discuss how the challenges might be overcome through the application of ethical values and legal principles that have been identified in literature. This is followed by a proposal for possible ways of streamlining the governance of health data sharing from ethical and legal perspectives in a bid to better prepare for future global health emergencies and promote the responsible sharing of health data.

3D scanning and printing technologies are quickly evolving and offer great potential for use in gross anatomical education. The use of human body donors to create digital scans and 3D printed models raises ethical concerns about donor informed consent, potential commodification, and access to and storage of potentially identifiable anatomical reproductions. This paper reviews available literature describing ethical implications for the application of these emerging technologies, existing published best practices for managing and sharing 2D imaging, and current adherence to these best practices by academic body donation programs. We conclude that informed consent is paramount for all uses of human donor and human donor-derived materials and that currently there is considerable diversity in adherence to established best practices for the management and sharing of 3D digital content derived from human donors. We propose a new and simplified framework for categorizing donor-derived teaching materials and the corresponding level of consent required for digital sharing. This framework proposes an equivalent minimum level of specific consent for human donor and human donor-derived materials relative to generalized, nonidentical teaching materials (i.e., artificial plastic models). Likewise, we propose that the collective path forward should involve the creation of a centralized, secure repository for digital human donor 3D content as a mechanism for accumulating, regulating, and controlling the distribution of properly consented human donor-derived 3D digital content that will also increase the availability of ethically created human-derived teaching materials while discouraging commodification.

The growing importance of researching online activities, such as cyber-deviance and cyber-crime, as well as the use of online tools (e.g. questionnaires, games, and other interactive tools) has created new ethical and legal challenges for researchers, which can be even more complicated when researching adolescents. In this article, we highlight the risks emerging from the current European legal and ethical landscape when researching potentially vulnerable groups, with a special focus on online research. It is not always clear how to differentiate research ethics consent from consent for data processing activities: when can an adolescent independently consent to research, or when is parental consent needed? Additional problems emerge when parents do not consent to research activities, but their adolescent children do. A serious ethical challenge can arise when the parents do not communicate with researchers, but the adolescent wishes to participate, especially when weak parental oversight is coupled with research on sensitive topics. We offer some guidance on what to keep in mind when conducting online research with adolescents and highlight possible ways that these issues can be dealt with in pan-European projects.

The increasing ubiquity of gamification in everyday life normalizes it as a motivational tool. While much scholarship supports gamification, labor sociologists have long problematized the phenomenon. In this mixed-methods action research study, we explore the results of gamifying a lesson on gamification in a sociology of work course. We designed two gamified activities with varying degrees of consent that followed a lesson on gamification and consent. Students rated how problematic a series of gamified work scenarios were before and after the intervention. Our quantitative data did not show a significant increase in students' ability to identify consent after the intervention, but we did discover that students took either an employee or employer's perspective in their rating justifications. Furthermore, these findings were gendered. This article highlights the need for a more critical take on gamification in the classroom. We conclude by suggesting ways practitioners can teach about gamification in other contexts.

Valid consent requires the potential research participant understands the information provided. We examined current practice in 50 proposed Clinical Trials of Investigational Medicinal Products to determine how this understanding is checked. The majority of the proposals (n = 44) indicated confirmation of understanding would take place during an interactive conversation between the researcher and potential participant, containing questions to assess and establish understanding. Yet up until now, research design and review have not focussed upon this, concentrating more on written material. We propose ways this interactive conversation can be documented, and the process of checking understanding improved.

Background: School-based health centers (SBHCs) have the capability to overcome youth barriers to care. Virtual care programs (VCP) facilitate connection between school nurse and off-site SBHC providers and can increase the reach of SBHCs. This project aimed to examine Denver Public School nurses' perspectives of a pilot VCP. Methods: Thirteen semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted and coded using an inductive approach to identify key themes. Results: Four major themes emerged: (1) obtaining consent, finding space, and capacity are challenges and nurses have suggestions; (2) nurses enjoy feeling like a valued member of a health care team, and providing additional resources to students; (3) nurses perceive benefits in providing free, efficient, higher level of care; (4) adopting novel technology is a facilitator and challenge; limitations included space and privacy. Conclusions: Key findings can be utilized to further inform practice.

To meet the diverse needs of school-aged children, school psychologists often must collaborate with other professionals within and outside the school setting. Despite potential benefits, challenges exist related to interprofessional collaboration, including ethical challenges. This article explores some of the most salient ethical dilemmas that school psychologists are likely to face when collaborating with other professionals. Specifically, ethical issues related to competence, multiple relationships, informed consent/assent, privacy/confidentiality, assessment, and therapy are examined. Using vignettes, recommendations for navigating common ethical issues that may arise when engaging in interprofessional collaboration are offered. Suggestions are contextualized within the ethical principles and standards outlined in the American Psychological Association's "Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct" (2017) and the National Association of School Psychologists Professional Standards (2020), which includes the Principles for Professional Ethics.

Human body donors play a crucial role in anatomical education, research, and clinical skills training, and those interested in anatomical donation may bequeath their bodies to body donation programs (BDPs). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the perspective of body donors on the donation process in order to make recommendations for improvement that align with donor values. A survey was administered via email to 2145 individuals that had enrolled in The Ohio State University's BDP and yielded a 40% response rate. Results showed that a majority of registered donors do not place high importance on detailed consent options during the enrollment process, but do value BDP oversight, such as through the use of an oversight committee to supervise the program. Only 9.1% of donors felt that their loved ones should be permitted to make changes to their consent forms after they have passed. Although 96.2% of participants would allow photos/videos to be taken of their donated bodies, females were significantly less likely to consent to this than males (p = 0.001), as well as less likely to allow their donations to be utilized for anatomy outreach (p = 0.023). Racial minorities were significantly less trusting of the university to treat their donation with dignity and respect compared to White registrants (p = 0.034). Suggestions for improving BDP protocols include the implementation of an annual newsletter for registrants, improving methods to spread awareness about donation, increasing transparency during the consent process, and creating resources for donors' families.

Gaining ethical approval for qualitative health research and implementing all the planned research processes in a proposed study are not straightforward endeavours. The situation becomes more complex when qualitative research is conducted in a cross-national healthcare and academic context. Also, it is even exhausting when the study is student-based, as student researchers may be considered novices and inexperienced researchers, especially for field-based research. Our aim in this reflective paper is to present, reflect, and discuss the experiences of a doctoral researcher in dealing with two independent institutional review boards in Canada and Ghana during an interdisciplinary Ph.D. project and the ethical dilemmas encountered while collecting data in Ghana. Based on the researcher's experiences, it became apparent that consent and its documentation can have cultural implications in different settings; hence, institutional review boards must exercise reflexivity in their protocol review practice. Also, sharing research data with participants and institutional leaders while maintaining participant confidentiality and privacy in institutional ethnographic research requires sensitivity to bi-lateral ethical values. With the experiences shared in this paper, we advocate for a dialogic ethical review process in qualitative research where researchers and research ethics boards engage in ongoing dialogue rather than the usual prescriptive format research ethics reviews often assume.

Ethical reviews of research plans function as a cornerstone of good research practice in order that no harm should come to participants. Ethical concerns have taken on a new salience in a digital world where data can be generated at scale. Big data research has grown rapidly, raising increased ethical concerns. Several intersecting areas of big data research exist within educational research, such as learning analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In the current study, an investigation was made of peer-reviewed papers on MOOC teaching and learning to determine if they explicitly refer to (a) ethical considerations in their studies, and (b) obtaining formal ethical approval for their research. This investigation was accomplished through a review of MOOC-related, English-language papers available in Scopus database, over the course of a year. The review produced a total of 1,249 articles, of which, 826 articles related to empirical studies involving human participants where full text of the articles could be obtained. The string "ethic" was searched for within these articles, and resulting articles analyzed, which found that a small fraction, 42 articles (5.08%), mention ethics in relation to the study presented in the article, and only 13 articles (1.57%) explicitly mention obtaining formal ethical approval for the research. The findings show a lack of transparency in reporting on and/or engagement with ethical considerations in MOOC teaching and learning research. These findings indicate the need for further stakeholder engagement and sectoral dialogue in relation to ethics education and training for researchers; consideration of ethics in big data studies in education; and norms/policies in academic publishing for authors to report how ethical issues have been considered.

Society is one of the most important leading factors which affect human life. Humans need to exist in the society which they are the subject of and continue their development. The healthy development and advancement of both societies and humans are possible with education. Without doubt, the only people who keep the connection between humans and societies strong are teachers. Teachers are the ambassadors of education, the future of society and the light lit in darkness. For teachers to duly carry out this duty, they need to have certain qualities. One of the qualities is the prestige of teachers. The purpose of this study is to analyze the prestige teachers have view of the society. The study was carried out in the case study model which is one of the qualitative research methods. The study group of the society consists of 45 participants selected from the society, who live in Kahramanmaras and are not teachers but belong to different occupational groups. The participants were reached through the convenience sampling method. The study data were obtained through the structured interview form prepared by the researcher. The obtained data were analyzed through the content analysis method. As a result of the obtained findings, it was determined that society have positive associations about the teaching profession and that teachers' prestige directly affects education and economic factors and the society play a deterministic role in teachers' prestige. In addition, while teaching is a prestigious profession view of the society. And the society thinks that teachers need to earn their prestige through their own actions. Finally, society stated that they would become teachers if given the chance. [The publication year (2022) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct publication year is 2023.]

In this study, individuals' trust and verification of social media news and their digital literacy were examined according to the variables of gender, educational status and duration of social media engagement. 174 people participated in the study, which was designed with a cross-sectional design. The results of t-test, ANOVA and Kruskall Wallis-H analysis revealed that gender made a significant difference in digital literacy, corporate and individual trust scores. Educational status produced the same effect in corporate and individual trust scores. According to the findings of the correlation analysis, the duration of social media usage did not cause a significant difference in any of the variables. In addition, while the factors of trusting and verifying were related to each other at different levels, digital literacy was only associated with verifying.

The informed consent process is integral to medical procedures, including skin biopsies, which are the definitive method for diagnosing challenging skin lesions. Educational videos are recognized for effective delivery of information for informed consent. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of an informed consent process using educational videos to improve patient understanding and reduce preprocedural anxiety. This multicenter, randomized controlled study was conducted during December 2021-June 2023. Participants were randomly assigned to either the video or verbal group in a 1:1 ratio. They completed knowledge and anxiety questionnaires before and after biopsy. The final analysis included 54 participants (verbal group: n=28; video group: n=26) with a mean age of 51.9 years (standard deviation [SD] 18.1), and a balanced gender distribution. Post-intervention knowledge scores (median 10.0; IQR 8.0-10.0) significantly increased compared to pre-intervention scores (median 6.0; IQR 4.0-9.0), p<0.001. Post-intervention Spielberger state-trait anxiety inventory (STAI) scores (median 5.0; interquartile range, IQR 5.0-6.0) significantly decreased compared to pre-intervention scores (median 7.0; IQR 5.0-10.0), p<0.001. Knowledge scores increased more in the video group (median, 2.5; IQR 1.0-5.0) than in the verbal group (median, 1.5; IQR 0.0-4.0), p=0.217. There was no significant difference in STAI score changes between the video group (median 1.0, IQR 0.0-4.0) and the verbal group (median 1.0, IQR 0.0-3.0), p=0.824. Despite statistical insignificance, educational videos exhibited greater effectiveness in enhancing comprehension and demonstrated comparable efficacy in reducing anxiety compared to conventional intervention.

Typically, parents or other legal guardians are asked for an active declaration that the participation of their child in scientific research is informed and voluntary. However, asking for active parental consent leads to lower quality studies and passive parental consent might be preferable. In this study, we used an online survey in which parents (N = 156) watched video vignettes of multiple types of research in the classroom and asked them to rate the appropriateness of using active and passive parental consent. The results indicated that parents perceived active consent procedures as more appropriate in most types of research. However, particularly for secondary school children passive consent was rated as comparably appropriate for several types of research (e.g. observation and questionnaire studies). Other aspects of providing consent are displayed in a supplementary online dashboard. We conclude with recommendations for parental consent procedures for social science research in the school context.

As Twitter's (or X's) influence permeates aspects of education, researchers must consider how to ethically and effectively leverage the unique types of data that this social media platform offers. This paper provides recommended methodological practice considerations for working with qualitative Twitter data toward the advancement of education research. To inform our methodological protocol, we draw from a larger study that investigated disability disclosure during graduate school on Twitter. We use examples from our study to highlight similar protocol considerations that future researchers might take when working with qualitative Twitter data, including use of the website's advanced search feature and use of multifaceted analysis approaches for capturing this data's often unique complexity. We further provide ethical considerations for conducting social media research in education. Finally, we discuss the utility of the practices described in this article for moving education research forward via qualitative Twitter data.

As our modern world has become increasingly digitalized, various types of data from different data domains are available that can enrich survey data. To link survey data to other sources, consent from the survey respondents is required. This article compares consent to data linkage requests for seven data domains: administrative data, smartphone usage data, bank data, biomarkers, Facebook data, health insurance data, and sensor data. We experimentally explore three factors of interest to survey designers seeking to maximize consent rates: consent question order, consent question wording, and incentives. The results of the study using a German online sample (n = 3,374) show that survey respondents have a relatively high probability of consent to share smartphone usage data, Facebook data, and biomarkers, while they are least likely to share their bank data in a survey. Of the three experimental factors, only the consent question order affected consent rates significantly. Additionally, the study investigated the interactions between the three experimental manipulations and the seven data domains, of which only the interaction between the data domains and the consent question order consistently showed a significant effect.

As a result of the growing commercial marketplace for teachers' digital data, a new organization that includes educational data brokers has evolved. Educational data brokerage is relatively intangible due to the ease of de-identified data being collected and sold via educational technology. There is an urgent need to expose how the brokerage of educational data relates to the commercial mediation of consent and privacy in educational settings. It is difficult due to a lack of consistent terminology about organizations that buy and sell data. This paper offers an extensive analysis of the social learning platform Edmodo and provides evidence that justifies the term 'educational data broker'. The results aim to provide new terminology to a largely obfuscated process in educational settings and bring to light a concrete example of brokerage activity focusing on teachers' online activity.

Educational psychologists (EPs) have a legal and ethical obligation to gain informed consent prior to any psychological involvement. As EPs work across the 0 to 25 age range, the person giving consent may vary according to the needs of the individual service user and so it is necessary to be aware of relevant legislation and case law. This study explored what might be considered best practice for EPs in gaining consent across the 0 to 25 age range by conducting semi-structured interviews with six professionals as part of an expert reference group. The interviews were thematically analysed using a hybrid inductive-deductive approach. Six main themes were identified: ethical obligations; children's rights; legal obligations; partnership; informed consent; and, barriers to best practice. There was considerable overlap between some of the main themes, reflecting the complexity of the issue. The findings are discussed in relation to literature in other areas of psychological practice. Implications for practice for individual EPs and EP services are considered, such as the possibility of developing a guidance document for use across the profession, as well as directions for further research.

Peer support has been an undeveloped pathway for filling the service gap and to generate employment opportunities for autistic individuals. Peer supports have been deployed widely in mental health and among veterans and understanding the utility of this service modality among autistic individuals illuminates opportunities for research, policy, and practice. This study examined characteristics of participants in an autistic-delivered peer support program and reports on use of and satisfaction with the program. Half of autistic participants had a co-occurring mental health diagnosis. Participants reported multiple areas of unmet needs and participant satisfaction with the program was high (90%). The findings of this study point toward autistic-delivered peer support as a promising avenue for future development.

Professional organization ethical codes are adopted to protect the public by educating their members to standards of conduct and by facilitating resolution of ethical complaints. Given that the last survey on ethics in school psychology was conducted over a decade ago, the aim of this study was to investigate the ethical dilemmas practitioners face today, along with their preparedness for resolving these dilemmas. We also examined workplace resources and whether preparedness and resolution were related to background variables (i.e., degree, setting, ethics training). Results indicated most school psychologists experienced at least one ethical dilemma over the past year, mostly in the areas of assessment and administrative pressure. Although most participants felt prepared to face ethical dilemmas, relatively few used a systematic decision-making model to resolve them. Last, most school psychologists reported feeling relatively unprepared for ethically delivering psychological services via telehealth. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

The global scale of COVID-19 has constrained academics from conducting much person-facing research. Reactively, trend is increasing for digital-based methodologies capturing already existing online data. Scholars often 'scrape' user-postings from internet forums using coding algorithms and text capture tools, before analysing data, drawing conclusions and publishing findings. The online social news aggregation and discussion website Reddit is a particularly rich source of data for researchers. The public nature of Reddit materials may suggest rationale for user-data to be replicated, analysed and archived; indefinitely and in multiple locations, for scholarly research. However, this position overlooks several key ethical considerations. This paper presents an overview and explanation of Reddit, followed by an exploration of studies that use Reddit-acquired data. Arising ethical issues are discussed, and solutions to salient dilemmas presented. This is to enhance awareness of potential problems and improve protections for those whose data is unknowingly used for research.

Members of research ethics committees (RECs) face a number of ethical challenges when reviewing genomic research. These include issues regarding the content and type of consent, the return of individual research results, mechanisms of sharing specimens and health data, and appropriate community engagement efforts. This article presents the findings from a survey that sought to investigate the opinions and attitudes of REC members from four Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa (Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, and Jordan) toward these ethical issues. Our findings suggest that efforts are required to better familiarize REC members with the requirements for ethical biobank research. Additionally, we recommend that further research is undertaken with REC members regarding the main items that should be present in the Material Transfer Agreements/Data Transfer Agreements in their corresponding countries and the type of consent that should be used in genomic research.

The last decade has seen a rise in big data approaches, including in the humanities, whereby large quantities of data are collected and analysed. In this paper, we discuss long-form audio recordings that result from individuals wearing a recording device for many hours. Linguists, psychologists and anthropologists can use them, for example, to study infants' or adults' linguistic behaviour. In the past, recorded individuals and communities have resided in high-income countries (HICs) almost exclusively. Recognising the need for better representation of all cultures and linguistic experiences, researchers have more recently started to collect long-form audio recordings in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We aim to help researchers to collect, analyse and use these recordings ethically. To do so, we identify four main ethical challenges linked to research that relies on long-form recordings in LMICs. We provide recommendations to overcome these challenges. These considerations should be useful to researchers employing other big data techniques collected via wearables.

Although the use of the cluster randomized trial (CRT) design to evaluate vaccines, public health interventions or health systems is increasing, the ethical issues posed by the design are not adequately addressed, especially in low- and middle-income country settings (LMICs). To help reveal ethical challenges, qualitative interviews were conducted with key stakeholders experienced in designing and conducting two selected CRTs in Malawi. The 18 interviewed stakeholders included investigators, clinicians, nurses, data management personnel and community workers who were invited to share their experiences related to implementation of CRTs. Data analysis revealed five major themes with ethical implications: (1) The moral obligation for health care providers to participate in health research and its compensation; (2) Suboptimal care services compromising the integrity of CRT; (3) Ensuring scientific validity and withholding care service; (4) Obtaining valid consent and permission for waiver of consent; and (5) Inadequate risk assessment for trial participation. Understanding key ethical issues posed by CRTs in Malawi could improve ethical review and research oversight of this particular study design.

Protective face masks were one of the central measures to counteract viral transmission in the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior research indicates that face masks impact various aspects of social cognition, such as emotion recognition and social evaluation. Whether protective masks also influence social avoidance behavior is less clear. Our project assessed direct and indirect measures of social avoidance tendencies towards masked and unmasked faces in two experiments with 311 participants during the first half of 2021. Two interventions were used in half of the participants from each sample (Experiment 1: protective face masks; Experiment 2: a disease prime video) to decrease or increase the salience of the immediate contagion threat. In the direct social avoidance measure, which asked for the deliberate decision to approach or avoid a person in a hypothetical social encounter, participants showed an increased willingness to approach masked as opposed to unmasked faces across experiments. This effect was further related to interindividual differences in pandemic threat perception in both samples. In the indirect measure, which assessed automatic social approach and avoidance tendencies, we neither observed an approach advantage towards masked faces nor an avoidance advantage for unmasked faces. Thus, while the absence of protective face masks may have led to increased deliberate social avoidance during the pandemic, no such effect was observed on automatic regulation of behavior, thus indicating the relative robustness of this latter behavior against changes in superordinate social norms.

Background: Historically the voices of people with intellectual disability have been occluded by barriers imposed by research practice. More recently, adaptive research approaches have been proposed to enhance the inclusion of people with intellectual disability in qualitative research. Method: This article presents an adaptive interviewing approach employed with five people ageing with intellectual disabilities in rural South Australia. The interviews were conducted within a broader participatory action research project in which tools and resources were co-designed for post-parental care planning. Results: We describe our adaptive interviewing approach incorporating multiple methods: (i) responsive communication techniques; (ii) the inclusion and support of family carers; (iii) visual tools; (iv) walking interviews. Conclusion: Findings contribute knowledge about how an adaptive interview approach supports the participation of people with an intellectual disability in qualitative research.

To explore issues surrounding re-consenting youth in longitudinal studies as they reach legal adulthood interviews were conducted with 46 parents plus 13 autistic teens enrolled in the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge (SPARK) study. Qualitative analysis focused on family sensitivities regarding guardianship decisions, transition concerns, and the re-consenting process. Questions regarding guardianship were difficult for parents unsure of a teen's future status. Mothers were key facilitators of re-consenting for soon-to-be-independent teens. As legal adulthood approached, parents were willing to assist teens with re-consenting but needed support, asking for multiple contacts, transition resources, and explanatory materials from the research team. Most teens were not cognizant of SPARK but willing to continue participation once made aware.

In the realm of psychology and related fields, like school psychology, obtaining informed consent from clients or participants who are 18 years old or older is mandatory for researchers. However, if the individuals are below 18 years old or under a conservatorship, their assent is crucial even if their parent or legal guardian has provided formal consent. Despite the widespread recognition of the importance of assent during research, there is a lack of research and guidelines on how to obtain it effectively. To bridge this gap, we conducted a review and created a summary of research published in school psychology journals on gaining assent during research studies. The articles were categorized based on the experimental design, population, and level of assent described. Our findings offer a comprehensive overview of the current state of research on gaining assent in school psychology, which will enhance transparency in research methods.

The management of human fetal and embryological collections presents an ethical challenge that can be explored from different perspectives, particularly when considering informed consent. The "micro ethics" level focuses on parties engaged in giving and receiving human tissue while the "macro ethics" level focusses on the collective responsibility of the discipline and society. Additionally, adopting a framework, where ways of working are designed with relevant communities, requires understanding the perspectives of individuals, communities, and organizations. The aim of this study therefore was to assess the perceptions of education-focused Australian stakeholders. A survey collected the perspectives of 198 participants. The majority of participants (61.6%; n = 122/198) indicated that human fetal and embryological remains obtained prior to era of informed consent should be retained for use in education/research. It is likely that their perspective is based on the notion that if human fetal and embryological collections are used for good, then disposing of them would deny this benefit. Women (p < 0.001) indicated a preference for obtaining fetuses and embryos with informed consent for education and research (38.4%; n = 76/198). Majority were in favor of recording both maternal (MI) (59.6%; n = 118/198) and paternal information (PI) (58.1%; n = 115/198) with each donation. Majority (56.1%; n = 111/198) expressed that donations should be accepted from both parental sources. Consideration of stakeholder perspectives is important in developing guidelines regarding these collections. The results from this study demonstrate a level of discomfort with respect to collections without informed consent, which should be considered at the macro ethical and micro ethical level.

Background: People with severe to profound intellectual disabilities experience similar or higher levels of depression than those with more mild intellectual disabilities. Yet, there is an absence of evidence about how to adapt existing psychological therapies for this population. Method: A behavioural activation intervention (BeatIt) for people with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities was adapted for people with severe to profound intellectual disabilities and depression. Key considerations include: (i) beginning with a more in-depth assessment process; (ii) including the person in session activities and developing a relationship with them; (iii) formulation and the use of film to document the link between activity and mood; and (iv) addressing barriers to change at an individual and inter-personal level and considering how the carer could support the person's engagement in activity. Results: Successfully adapting BeatIt represents a first step towards gathering evidence about the effectiveness of behavioural activation for people with severe to profound intellectual disabilities.

For many researchers in the social sciences, including those in applied linguistics, the term ethics evokes the bureaucratic process of fulfilling the requirements of an ethics review board (e.g., in the US, an Institutional Review Board, or IRB) as a preliminary step in conducting human subjects research. The expansion of ethics review boards into the social sciences in the early 2000s has led applied linguistics as a field to experience what Haggerty (2004) termed ethics creep, a simultaneous expansion and intensification of external regulation of research activities. The aims of these ethical review boards are: (a) to evaluate the types and risk of harm to participants as a result of research activities, (b) ensure that participants can give informed consent to be part of the research activities, and (c) provide oversight on researcher procedures to maintain participant anonymity/confidentiality (Haggerty, 2004).

Previous research shows that processing times on emotion words (both negative and positive) are faster than on non-emotional neutral words. In the current study, we explored how personality traits (the Big Five and the trait emotional intelligence factors) may further influence the processing of emotion versus non-emotion words by conducting two experiments where participants silently read sentences while their eye movements were recorded. The results replicated the facilitative emotion effect and showed that those with higher agreeableness scores had stronger emotion effects on positive words and those with higher extraversion scores, higher openness scores, higher agreeableness scores, lower sociability scores, and higher emotionality scores had stronger emotion effects on negative words. Furthermore, some personality traits also led to different ways that readers approach text, for example, through more risky reading strategies.

Inner speaking, the production, and experience of verbal language without any audible vocalization is a critical component of inner experience and imagination. The role that (un)certainty plays in idea generation might explain the unique ways in which idea generation is characterized and affected by different types of inner speech. To explore this open problem, an experiment with a within-subject design (n = 202) was conducted. The results suggested that certainty about the potential of selected information for generating original and useful ideas, elicited using creativity instructions, caused increased self-reinforcement, self-management, and simulation of social interactions with imagined others by inner speaking, but did influence self-critical inner speaking. Self-reinforcing inner speaking, and possibly the simulation of social interactions, subsequently affected the degree of originality and usefulness participants attributed to their ideas. Herewith, the present study contributes novel insight into how inner speaking characterizes and affects idea generation.

Conducting qualitative research on young people with intellectual disability and the Internet poses methodological challenges as well as opportunities. Based on memos from a qualitative study, this article focuses on identified gaps related to the challenges of informed consent, access to Internet arenas and using stimulus materials. Opportunities, in terms of flexibility and relationships, are discussed and problematized. The discussion shows that researchers may need to move out of their comfort zone and try nonconventional methods of data collection. It is important to be creative and innovative but also to look after the rights and interests of participants. Furthermore, take a non-directive approach and assume young people with intellectual disability to be experts on their own lives. Finally, the power imbalance between a researcher and participant should be considered and the researcher should ask him-/herself which perspective he/she wishes to present or 'whose side are we on?'

People with disabilities in the United States have access to a fraction of engaging play experiences available to others due to playground design choices, minimal legal requirements, and societal acceptance of the status quo. PlayGrand Adventures, the first and largest all-abilities playground in North Texas, meets this need by providing engaging play opportunities for everyone. This qualitative case study explores and describes community engagement at PlayGrand Adventures, informed by principles of environmental reciprocity supported by Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory (1986) and Gibson's Affordance Theory (1979). The researcher collected data on community perception and engagement via a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and playground observations. The study fills a gap in academic research on all-abilities playgrounds in the United States to increase awareness of the systemic underserving of people with disabilities in this country and provides a potential solution. The researcher offers initial recommendations for PlayGrand Adventures' future development and implementation with implications for replication in other cities.

Cognitive ability and curiosity are significant predictors of academic achievement; yet the processes underlying these relations are not well understood. I drew on ideas from the environmental enrichment hypothesis and the differential preservation hypothesis and hypothesized that epistemic behavior acts as a mediator. Longitudinal data were collected from 1964 individuals in three waves, spanning five years: cognitive ability and curiosity were assessed at time 1; epistemic behavior at time 2; at time 3, grade point average and highest degree of both secondary and tertiary academic education (if applicable) were obtained retrospectively via self-report. I found expected bivariate relations between all study variables, including a significant relation between cognitive ability and curiosity and significant relations of both of these variables with secondary academic performance. Epistemic behavior was related to curiosity and academic performance but, at odds with the hypothesis, did not mediate the relation between cognitive and personality variables and academic performance. It is concluded that the process underlying the behavioral consequences of cognitive ability and curiosity is not environmental enrichment.

Obtaining ethical approval for my PhD research with adults with learning (intellectual) disabilities presented an unexpected challenge of learning to work with two sets of guidance: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and the Ethical Conduct in Human Research and Related Activities Regulations (HRR). The CRPD binds States Parties to progress equal rights for people with disabilities of which Article 12, equal recognition before the law, disconnects mental capacity from legal capacity. The HRR protects participants, researchers and institutions and recognises mental capacity as a component of informed consent. In applying the CRPD and the HRR as complementary safeguards, and looking through the lens of edgewalking, I gained an appreciation for positively encountering complexity and incorporating multiple points of view. This article will describe how my challenging experience enabled skill building to develop a more strategic academic voice and will be of interest to student and other researchers.

This descriptive study provides an overview of research-based benefits and challenges of attending online conferences, in addition to participant feedback data from one online education conference conducted in February 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research is grounded in adult learning theory. The purpose of this study was to explore conference participant perceptions (n = 51) of their learning at this virtual education conference with the goal of contributing to future best practices in online professional learning experiences. Post-conference survey data indicated that 98% of participants reported that the sessions were of high quality and the presenters were prepared. However, there were statistically significantly (p = 0.043) more participants who enjoyed face-to-face conferences compared with online conferences. Additionally, over 90% of participants agreed that the content from the conference would benefit their students and improve their own research practice. Recommendations for facilitating effective online conferences include: 1) Organize and communicate consistently and with clarity; 2) Utilize technological platforms that are familiar to participants; 3) Consider the sociopolitical context in which the conference occurs. This research can inform virtual conference organizers in effective planning and facilitating of online professional development experiences that align with adult learning theory components.

Science Cafés are informal community gatherings that aim to facilitate the engagement of scientific researchers with the general public. These events have been implemented worldwide in rural and urban settings. This article evaluates two Science Café series, held in rural Iowa communities. Evaluation of Science Cafés typically consists of participant surveys to measure satisfaction with the presenter, interest in the topic, or solicit topic suggestions for future events. This paper presents results from a qualitative evaluation that aimed to better understand how the information presented at Science Cafés was shared with others in the community following the event. Results suggest that participants share information in both formal and informal settings following a Science Café, especially those who self-identify as "champions" of an issue. This research suggests that future evaluations examine rural social networks to better understand the broader community impact of these events.

The increased Simon effect with increasing the ratio of congruent trials may be interpreted by both attention modulation and irrelevant stimulus-response (S-R) associations learning accounts, although the reversed Simon effect with increasing the ratio of incongruent trials provides evidence supporting the latter account. To investigate if learning irrelevant S-R associations is a common mechanism underlying the proportion congruency (PC) effect of the Simon task, we employed a variant of diffusion model, diffusion model for conflict tasks (DMC), to test which theory can simultaneously account for the mean reaction time (RT) and RT distribution patterns of the Simon effect in different PC conditions. Simulation results showed that the DMC modulating starting point according to learned irrelevant S-R associations rather than drift criterion or attention-related parameters (i.e., drift rate of controlled process, peak amplitude and time-to-peak of automatic activation) can simultaneously simulate the increase and reversal of the Simon effect and the different shapes of delta functions in different PC conditions. Moreover, when fitting to empirical data, the DMC adjusting starting point provided a good fit to the mean RT and RT distribution patterns of the Simon effect in different PC conditions. These results suggest learning irrelevant S-R associations (biasing starting point) may be a common mechanism underlying the PC effect of the Simon task.

Learning analytics (LA) has gained increasing attention for its potential to improve different educational aspects (e.g., students' performance and teaching practice). The existing literature identified some factors that are associated with the adoption of LA in higher education, such as stakeholder engagement and transparency in data use. The broad literature on information systems also emphasizes the importance of trust as a critical predictor of technology adoption. However, the extent to which trust plays a role in the adoption of LA in higher education has not been examined in detail in previous research. To fill this literature gap, we conducted a mixed method (survey and interviews) study aimed to explore how much teaching staff trust LA stakeholders (e.g., higher education institutions or third-parties) and LA technology, as well as the trust factors that could hinder or enable adoption of LA. The findings show that the teaching staff had a high level of trust in the competence of higher education institutions and the usefulness of LA; however, the teaching staff had a low level of trust in third parties that are involved in LA (e.g., external technology vendors) in terms of handling privacy and ethics-related issues. They also had a low level of trust in data accuracy due to issues such as outdated data and lack of data governance. The findings have strategic implications for institutional leaders and third parties in the adoption of LA by providing recommendations to increase trust, such as, improving data accuracy, developing policies for data sharing and ownership, enhancing the consent-seeking process, and establishing data governance guidelines. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature on the adoption of LA in HEIs by integrating trust factors.

Past research indicates that people judge repeated statements as more true than new ones. An experiential consequence of repetition that may underly this "truth effect" is processing fluency: Processing statements feels easier following their repetition. In three preregistered experiments (N = 684), we examined the effect of merely instructed repetition (i.e., not experienced) on truth judgments. Experiments 1-2 instructed participants that some statements were present (vs. absent) in an exposure phase allegedly undergone by other individuals. We then asked them to rate such statements based on how they thought those individuals would have done. Overall, participants rated repeated statements as more true than new statements. The instruction-based repetition effects were significant but also significantly weaker than those elicited by the experience of repetition (Experiments 1 and 2). Additionally, Experiment 2 clarified that adding a repetition status tag in the experienced repetition condition did not impact truth judgments. Experiment 3 further showed that the instruction-based effect was still detectable when participants provided truth judgments for themselves rather than estimating other people's judgments. We discuss the mechanisms that can explain these effects and their implications for advancing our understanding of the truth effect.

Simulated standardized patients (SPs) are trained individuals who pose incognito as people seeking treatment in a health care setting. With the method's increasing use and popularity, we propose some standards to adapt the method to contextual considerations of feasibility, and we discuss current issues with the SP method and the experience of consent and ethical research in international SP studies. Since a foundational discussion of the research ethics of the method was published in 2012, a growing number of studies have implemented this method to collect data on the quality of care in a variety of settings around the world. We draw from that experience to provide empirical foundations for a popular approach to ethical approval of such studies in the United States and Canada, which has been to obtain a waiver of informed consent from the health care providers who are the subjects of the research. However, the majority of studies to date have evaluated quality of care outside the U.S., requiring additional ethical consideration when partnering with international institutions. We discuss these considerations in the context of a case study from a completed SP study in South Africa, where informed consent is constitutionally protected.

The current system of ethical oversight in the United States is based on Institutional Review Board (IRB) review. The system was established in response to well-known and egregious mistreatment of subjects in both biomedical and social and behavioral research. In the decades since the research regulations were enacted, reaction to the burden of IRB oversight has led the system to focus on compliance and limit its active oversight disproportionately to studies that could present the risk of physical harm. At the same time, the characteristics of the research enterprise have changed and methodologies now present novel risks that were not envisioned in the regulations. We convened a group of IRB professionals, academic leaders, and others to discuss limitations of the current system, how that system could be changed to recognize evolving risks and an increasing focus on participant and community voice, and how it could better serve the needs of researchers and support the societal project of science as a public good. Recommendations included a call to reexamine the academic incentive structure, to develop a system to support consideration of ethical principles from the time of study design, and to explicitly provide different ethical support and oversight for high-risk interventional trials and lower risk biomedical and social behavioral research.

Transfer motivation is an important factor influencing transfer of training. However, earlier research often did not investigate transfer motivation as a multidimensional construct. The unified model of task-specific motivation (UMTM) takes into account that (transfer) motivation is multidimensional by including both affective and cognitive motivational components and their antecedents. Prior research has provided evidence that the UMTM can predict self-reported transfer of training, but is unclear whether it also can predict transfer reported by expert external raters. Moreover, it is unclear whether controlling for prior knowledge matters for the relationship between transfer motivation and transfer of training. This study improves on existing research by accounting for both of these gaps in the literature. Data were collected among 299 participants who filled in a questionnaire about the UMTM components directly after attending a writing training. They also handed in written documents before, and 6 weeks after the training, which were rated on transfer by trainers. Outcomes showed that components of the UMTM positively predict externally reported transfer when prior knowledge was controlled for. The outcomes imply that the UMTM has predictive value for transfer of training and points out which factors influence whether transfer does or does not occur.

Access to equal healthcare is a priority for people with intellectual disabilities. Most studies have focused on primary care providers; however, the administration of inclusive healthcare also relies on medical specialists, who should be considered a specific group because their practice varies significantly in this regard. Semi-directive interviews were conducted with 12 medical specialists to explore their representations regarding the care of people with intellectual disabilities. An inductive thematic analysis was applied to the data. The results highlighted a significant heterogeneity between practitioners' representations of people with intellectual disabilities in healthcare, current practices, and their perceptions and expectations in the process of ensuring quality care. This study highlights the importance of considering medical specialists' awareness raising and training to handle consultations with people with intellectual disabilities. From a broader perspective, a clear political framework to guide healthcare practices at the national level should be developed.

Critical thinking is identified as a key educational outcome in higher education curricula; however, it is not trivial to support students in building this multifaceted skill. In this study, we evaluated a brief online learning intervention focusing on informal fallacy identification, a hallmark critical-thinking skill. The intervention used a bite-sized video learning approach, which has been shown to promote student engagement. Video-based learning was implemented within a precision teaching (PT) framework, which modulates the exposure of individual learners to the learning material to enable them to build 'fluency' in the targeted skills. In one of the learning conditions, PT was applied synergistically with domain-general problem-based training to support generalisation. The intervention consisted of two learning episodes and was administered to three groups (learning conditions) of 19 participants each: a PT fluency-based training group; a PT + group, where PT was combined with problem-based training; and a self-directed learning control group. All three groups showed comparable improvements in fallacy identification on taught (post-episode tests) and unseen materials (post-intervention assessment), with lower-scoring participants showing higher gains than high-scoring participants. The results of the knowledge retention tests a week later were also comparable between groups. Importantly, in the domain-general fallacy-identification assessment (post-intervention), the two PT groups showed higher improvements than the control group. These findings suggest that the integration of bite-sized video learning technologies with PT can improve students' critical-thinking skills. Furthermore, PT, on its own or combined with problem-based training, can improve their skill to generalise learning to novel contexts. We discuss the educational implications of our findings.