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Introduction: Protecting
Human Subjects Across the
Geographic Research Process
Patricia L. Price
a
a
Florida International University
Published online: 02 Aug 2011.
To cite this article: Patricia L. Price (2012) Introduction: Protecting Human Subjects
Across the Geographic Research Process, The Professional Geographer, 64:1, 1-6, DOI:
10.1080/00330124.2011.596780
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2011.596780
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FOCUS: PROTECTING HUMAN
SUBJECTS ACROSS THE
GEOGRAPHIC RESEARCH PROCESS
Introduction: Protecting Human Subjects Across the
Geographic Research Process
Patricia L. Price
Florida International University
This collection of articles examines diverse aspects of human subjects protection. All are authored by geog-
raphers actively engaged with human subjects, whether as administrators, active researchers, or both. The
articles common point of departure is that human subjects protection is not a one-off event; rather, it is a
process that is stretched out temporally and spatially, involving multiple actors. Our aimis pragmatic inasmuch
as we focus on pushing beyond recounting IRB horror stories to engaging productively with conceptual,
thematic, and operational aspects of human subjects protection across the research process from a geography-
specic perspective. Key Words: ethics, human subjects, institutional review boards, research.
Esta colecci on de artculos examina diversos aspectos de la protecci on de asuntos humanos. Todos son
de la autora de ge ografos activamente involucrados con sujetos humanos ya sea como administradores,
investigadores activos, o ambos. El punto com un de partida de estos artculos es que la protecci on de los
seres humanos no es un hecho aislado, sino que es un proceso que se extiende temporal y espacialmente,
involucrando m ultiples actores. Nuestro objetivo es pragm atico en cuanto nos centremos en impulsar m as
all a del recuento de historias de horror IRB para participar productivamente en los aspectos conceptuales,
tem aticos y operativos de la protecci on de los seres humanos en todo el proceso de investigaci on desde
una perspectiva geogr aca especca. Palabras clave: etica, seres humanos, comit es institucionales de
revisi on, investigaci on.
R
egulatory oversight of human subject in-
volvement in research arose as part of
a general move toward federal protection of
those populations deemed vulnerable by
postwar welfare states. Given the history of
sporadic yet spectacular abuses of human
subjects involved in medical experimentation,
particularly of those purposely kept unaware
of the nature of their involvement or recruited
against their free will, human subjects involved
in research came to be considered a poten-
tially vulnerable population in need of legal
denition and protection.
Because human subjects oversight is primar-
ily federal in scale and legislative in nature, its
spirit, as well as its specics, vary from country
to country (see Israel and Hay [2006], for an
overview). In the United States, the National
Research Act was signed into law in 1974,
creating the National Commission for the
The Professional Geographer, 64(1) 2012, pages 16
C
Copyright 2012 by Association of American Geographers.
Initial submission, December 2009; revised submission, August 2010; nal acceptance, February 2011.
Published by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
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2
Volume 64, Number 1, February 2012
Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical
and Behavioral Research. The Commission was
charged with dening the basic ethical prin-
ciples undergirding human subjects participa-
tion in biomedical and behavioral research and
with articulating a set of guidelines that would
assure that these principles would be adhered
to in practice. The Commissions Belmont
Report, published in 1979, identied three
ethical principles underlying all human subject
research participation: respect for persons,
benecence, and justice. These principles were
revised and elaborated by the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS) over the
next decade, constituting 45 CFR 46, of which
subpart A (known as the Common Rule)
provides general guidelines for human subject
research participation, adopted by a total of
eighteen federal agencies by 1991.
1
This legislation is typically applied to all hu-
man subjects research conducted by institutions
(and the federal agencies that have adopted the
Common Rule) receiving funding from HHS.
2
Thus, most human subjects research conducted
by university-based researchers, including that
conducted in the social sciences and the hu-
manities, falls under the regulatory purview
of 45 CFR 46. From the outset, then, there
are several signicant slips twixt legislative in-
tent and institutional compliance. The rst is
the sometimes jarring disconnect between this
regulatory frameworks biomedical genesis and
its application in social science and humanities
contexts. Second is the apparently detailed and
potentially sweeping level of administrative in-
terference in matters often held to be at the
heart of academic freedom. Finally, it is one
thing to implement legislation with the stroke
of a pen, but it is quite another to institute a cul-
tural shift of the magnitude that has, over the
past decade, come to pervade the practice of
geographic research with human subjects with
respect to that legislation.
The articles in this Focus Section were ini-
tially delivered as panel presentations at the
Association of American Geographers annual
meeting held in Las Vegas in 2009. The pan-
elists were invited to participate in their capac-
ities as geographers actively involved in human
subjects research, as human subjects adminis-
trators, as National Science Foundation repre-
sentatives, or some combination of these roles.
The sessions goals were twofold, with the rst
goal being to unpack humansubjects protection
as a process rather than a one-off event. Al-
though researchers might actively think about
human subjects protection mostly, even solely,
inthe initial stages of researchdesignand secur-
ing institutional review board (IRB) approval,
both in spirit and in practice human subjects
protection spans the research process (Sieber
2000; Cahill, Sultana, and Pain 2007).
Our need to behave ethically and to satisfy reg-
ulatory requirements operates through the en-
tire research process. Social scientists might be
tempted to see research ethics approval as a
gate to be passed through but most commit-
tees intend their decisions to have an impact
on what follows and would imagine that their
work shapes what occurs before the formal re-
view process. (Israel and Hay 2006, 129)
As a research project moves from conceptual
and methodological design, through institu-
tional review and oversight, into the funding
process, and through to eldwork, write-up,
publication, and even return eldwork, a
diverse array of regulatory requirements,
operational considerations, and broader ethical
issues comes into play. In addition, multiple
actors beyond just the researcher and the
people who agree to participate in the project
are involved at different stages of the research
process. In brief, human subjects protection
is a collaborative, as well as temporally and
spatially stretched-out, affair.
The second goal of our session was to
shift the nature of the discussion surrounding
human subjects protection. As Bosk and de
Vries (2004) have noted, something is vaguely
uncollegial and distasteful to the social scien-
tists objections to IRBs (255). None of us
is an apologist for human subjects oversight,
and weve sat at differentindeed, at times
multipleplaces at the human subjects table,
such that as a group we are all too cognizant
of the complexities, conundrums, and conicts
that can be involved. Much of the literature
on human subjects protection from the social
sciences and humanities, however, presents an
oversimplied picture. Too often, discussion
devolves into a one-sided forum in which re-
searchers vent their frustration at the oversight
of university administrators, particularly those
whose power to delay or modify research is
seen as uninformed, arbitrary, or inappro-
priately interfering with academic freedom
(see, e.g., Bledsoe et al. 2007; White 2007).
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Protecting Human Subjects Across the Geographic Research Process
3
Indeed, the public and academic outcry over
what is seen as a ridiculously twisted process
has led to the term IRB wars to describe the
situation (Cohen 2007). At an interpersonal
level, too, some of the juiciest tales around
consist of academic horror stories involving
abusive administrators, murky guidelines,
missed deadlines, and research plans gone
terribly awry, all in the name of human subjects
protection (e.g., Nelson 2003). Many of these
stories are second- or third-hand and can verge
on the apocryphal, starting with phrases like
You wont believe what happened to someone
I know (of) when s/he submitted a proposal
to the IRB (see also Stark 2007). The ever-
circulating accounts of preliterate populations
required to sign consent forms, grandmas
ummoxed by complex consent processes for
class projects, or the perplexingly tautological
requirement that IRB approval be secured
to study the IRB provide three examples out
of many. Although these tales provide ample
opportunity for peer bonding (and, Ill admit
it, the sheer entertainment value of some of
them is quite high), and although some of
them undoubtedly contain more than a kernel
of truth, we wish to take a more constructive
approach. To put it bluntly, human subjects
oversight is here to stay: Now what?
Human subjects protection across the
research process can be seen as, and in the
contributions to this Focus Section is primarily
treated as, a strategic series of navigations
involving multiple actors and multiple sites.
Human subjects researchers engage in these
navigations rst of all because they must, ac-
cording to federal and local requirements that
they do so; yet we also do so because we ulti-
mately have the well-being, dignity, and rights
of those who participate in our research with
us as our primary goal. Thus, there are ways in
which the focused discussions presented here
draw from, dovetail with, and contribute to
larger debates within geography and beyond.
One of these larger bodies of work within
which this Focus Section can be broadly situ-
ated involves ethics, about which there is an in-
creasingly signicant body of recent work pro-
duced largely by critical human geographers
(e.g., Cloke 2002; contributions to Lee and
Smith 2004; Blomley 2007). Within this dis-
cussion, feminist geographers in particular have
endeavored to centralize the welfare, dignity,
and rights accruing to specic human bodies
as the focus of analysis in research and the-
ory concerning neoliberalism, welfare reform,
and globalization, rather than prioritizing ab-
stract entities such as the state and the econ-
omy in analysis of these processes (Staeheli
and Brown 2003; McDowell 2004; S. J. Smith
2005; Lawson 2007). These scholars have also
sought to shed light on the care work that goes
on, largely behind the scenes, as human bodies
are affected by processes resulting from these
shiftsprocesses such as loss of employment or
health care coverage, poverty, illness, disability,
incarceration, and deportation, among others.
Their work strives to reverse the devaluation of
care and responsibility in ways that can poten-
tially be extended to human subjects protection
across the research process (see also Israel and
Hay 2006; Cahill, Sultana, and Pain 2007; Butz
2008). Indeed, the phrase protection of human
subjects can be seen to carry with it a decidedly
condescending ring, as if the people in question
were incapable of protecting themselves. Might
those of us involved in human subjects research
at its various junctures reframe our roles in pos-
itive terms around an ethics of care and respon-
sibility? What would be the implications, both
practical and theoretical, of such a reframing?
A second debate to which the articles here
might well contribute involves nothing less
than the unsettling of the very boundaries of
human. Inquiry into the relationship be-
tween humans and nature (N. Smith 1984;
Wilson 1991; Neumann 2002), and human
and nonhuman animals (Elder, Wolch, and
Emel 1998; Jones and Cloke 2002; Haraway
2008), raises difcult questions for human sub-
jects protection. If humans themselves consti-
tute a fuzzy category, where thenliterally and
gurativelydoes human subjects protection
begin, and where does it end? Why is there
a separate body of legislation and institutional
oversight mechanisms for animals? Can places,
too, be considered potentially vulnerable and
in need of protection of their welfare, dignity,
and rights, just as people and animals are?
These, along with many other big ques-
tions, clearly have the potential to veer too far
aeld of our admittedly more humble scope
here, but they are nevertheless vitally impor-
tant to consider. To return, however, to an
overview of the Focus Section, three of the
contributions centralize the regulatory aspects
of human subjects protection, which are insti-
tutionally codied and negotiated at multiple
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Volume 64, Number 1, February 2012
scales. Scott Freundschuh has served in several
human subjectsrelated positions, both as
a university IRB member and as a federal
funding agency program ofcer. Although
standard IRB review procedures emphasize full
board review of biomedically related research,
Freundschuh notes that much of the human
research proposed by social and behavioral sci-
entists is in fact eligible for expedited or exempt
IRB review. Thus, social and behavioral sci-
entists often unnecessarily undergo a lengthy,
confusing, and frustrating review process.
Using several examples, Freundschuh outlines
how institutions and researchers can work to-
gether to devise a more straightforward human
subjects oversight process, while still remaining
within the boundaries of federal regulations.
In his article, Dan Trudeau highlights the
pedagogical value of the ethics review process.
According to Trudeau, the ethics review
process can constitute a signicant learning
experience in the education of geographers, in
at least two ways. One involves the translation
of the ethics standards adopted by professional
associationsin this case, the Association
of American Geographers (2009)into a
directly relevant set of practices for geographic
researchers. The second is broadly educa-
tional, inasmuch as the novice researcher is
encouraged to see research itself as an ongoing
and intentional process of inquiry. Trudeau
suggests that an understanding of research as
an ongoing process assists in the meaningful
protection of human subjects, which in practice
spans the research process rather than ending
when the IRB signs off.
In my article, I draw on my experience as
an IRB Chair at my university, contending that
geographers bring specic and very welcome
perspectives to the ethics review table. Some of
these involve notions specic to geography as a
discipline, such as scale and mobility, whereas
others involve the treatment of data that are
geographically identiable. Specically, I dis-
cuss human subjects concerns regarding linked
sociospatial data; the mobility of human sub-
jects throughout the research process, which
can make the ongoing application of protec-
tions problematic; and scalar mismatches in
oversight. More broadly, I suggest that there
is in practice more latitude for exibility and
contingency than institutional actors are often
willing to admit or recognize; thus, it is in-
cumbent on geographic researchers to educate
and participate in their local institutional hu-
man subjects review process.
Two additional contributions pull back
somewhat from the mechanics and strategies of
institutionalized processes of human subjects
protection to problematize technological and
conceptual dimensions of geographic research
and how these play out in practice. Deborah
Martin and Joshua Inwood question the clarity
of the boundaries that delineate the denitions
and interactions specied within ofcial hu-
man subjects discourse. Although researchers
are conventionally understood to be the ini-
tiators of human subjects protocols, they are
also the objects of those protocols. The repre-
sentation of human subjects by researchers,
as well, involves a great deal of subjectivity as
well as responsibility yet is rarely problema-
tized. In addition, Martin and Inwood are con-
cerned about the uneven parameters of how
institution-specic norms are applied with re-
spect to the interface between researchers and
IRBs, as well as dening the boundaries of
what permissible human subjects research even
is. Thus, neat subjectobject delimitations be-
tween researcher and researched are blurred,
and the terrain traversed by both is uneven and
shifting.
Negotiating the space among regulations,
guidelines, and practice proves challenging for
most human subjects researchers. In the course
of conducting research with street girls in Bo-
got a, Colombia, Amy Ritterbusch has prob-
lematized taken-for-granted human subjects
denitions of key terms, such as childhood, vul-
nerability, and consent. All three of these con-
cepts rely on context-specic assumptions that
do not necessarily hold across all places and
circumstances. Application of strictly dened
human subjects guidelines in the eld context
provided by Bogot as mean streets is problem-
atic, as well. In her article, Ritterbusch discusses
these issues and provides practical guidance for
navigating the gaps between ofcial parameters
and eld practice in ways that strive to maintain
the integrity of both.
In all, this introduction, along with the
contributions that follow, emphasizes the
admittedly frustrating, but also potentially
productive, disjunctures that exist between reg-
ulatory structures on the one hand and the ac-
tual practice of research on the other. Within
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Protecting Human Subjects Across the Geographic Research Process
5
these spaces resides a good deal of latitude
for strategic negotiation. It is our collec-
tive hope that insights from practicing geo-
graphic researchers (and, indeed, researchers
in general whose work involves human sub-
jects but falls outside the standard biomedi-
cal parameters) can meaningfully enrich the
human subjects protection process for all in-
volved. With that comes the recognition that
all of the committees, guidelines, and sanc-
tions in the world cannot replace an indi-
vidual researchers moral compass, a compass
that is honed over time in productive dialogue
with all involved across the geographic research
process.
Notes
1
45 CFR 46 subparts B, C, and D deal with spe-
cic populations (pregnant women, fetuses, and
neonates; prisoners; and children, respectively) and
have also been adopted by some of the agen-
cies adopting the Common Rule (subpart A). CFR
stands for Code of Federal Regulations, broadly de-
ned as the codication of administrative law in the
United States. The Central Intelligence Agency and
Social Security Administration are also required to
follow 45 CFR 46, including all subparts.
2
The specics depend on the terms of each institu-
tions Federal-Wide Assurance, the agreement be-
tween the institution and the Ofce for Human
Research Protections, which is the agency within
the HHS that oversees and enforces human sub-
jects legislation (see Pritchard 2001).
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PATRICIA L. PRICE is an Associate Professor in
the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies
at Florida International University, DM 431-B, Mi-
ami, FL33199. E-mail: pricep@u.edu. Her research
interests include cultural and urban geography. She is
currently researching the critical geographies of race
and ethnicity in the United States from a Latino/a
studiesinformed perspective.
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