Abstract:
Ethics in social science experimentation and data collection are often discussed but rarely articulated in
writing as part of research outputs. Although papers typically reference human subjects research
approvals from relevant institutional review boards, most recognize that such boards do not carry out
comprehensive ethical assessments. We propose a structured ethics appendix to provide details on the
following: policy equipoise, role of the researcher, potential harms to participants and nonparticipants,
conflicts of interest, intellectual freedom, feedback to participants, and foreseeable misuse of research
results. We discuss each of these and some of the norms and challenging situations of each. We believe
that discussing such issues explicitly in appendices of papers, even if briefly, will serve two purposes: more
complete communication of ethics can improve discussions of papers and can clarify and improve the
norms themselves
