Module 5 Assignment 1

Diversity in Research

Ethics within research also include diversity among participants. Previously, a great deal of the research was conducted almost exclusively on one group—Caucasian males. Research that lacks diversity in both gender and ethnicity among participants might not be generalizable to the greater population. For example, with medical research on medications, it is not adequate to conduct research on one group exclusively and assume that the medication will have the same effects in every other group. It would be the equivalent of taking a new pill for headache knowing that the pill has never been researched on someone of your gender and ethnicity. In fact, earlier, discrepancies in the representation of participant groups were so pronounced that some medical journal editors have begun insisting that they will not publish studies on clinical trials of medications unless those studies include roughly an equal number of male and female participants as well as diverse ethnic groups.

However, it is permissible to conduct research only on specific groups as long as the focus on a particular group is relevant to the topic of the study. For example, if a researcher wanted to conduct a qualitative study on the experiences of female engineers, it would be appropriate for him or her to exclude males from that research. Similarly, a researcher might want to study the roles of fathers among African Americans. Again, in that case, it would be permissible to exclude other genders and ethnicities from that particular study.

When a research topic is not specifically targeted toward one particular gender or ethnicity, it would not be acceptable to exclude other groups, and efforts must be made by the researcher to recruit a diverse population in the study. In spite of the best researcher efforts, it might not always be possible to have both genders and all ethnic groups equally represented in a research sample. At the very least, all research must include demographic information on the gender and ethnicity of the participants and the researcher must acknowledge any prominent lack of diversity in the sample as the limitation of the study. In such instances, the results might not be generalizable to the groups that were not included in the study.