Choosing a Topic That Is Too Close to Home
A student proposes a Society and Culture investigation into 'how social media affects body image among girls at our school'. She plans to survey 40 students, including her own friendship group, and to interview two students who have disclosed disordered eating to her. Her teacher must approve the proposal under the school's ethical research guidelines, which require informed consent, anonymity, minimal risk, and a clear distinction between research and counselling. The student argues the topic is personally meaningful and that her access makes the study feasible. The school counsellor has not been consulted. The teacher has one week before the class begins data collection and must decide whether to approve, modify, or redirect the proposal.
1. Analyse the ethical risks in this proposal and explain which guideline each risk engages.
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Several distinct risks arise:
- Informed consent and power: surveying classmates is low-risk in principle, but the student is a peer, not a neutral researcher. Friends may feel obliged to participate, undermining genuinely voluntary consent.
- Anonymity and confidentiality: with 40 students in one school, and a friendship group within that sample, 'anonymous' responses may be identifiable by the researcher and by others reading quoted material. Small-sample anonymity is fragile.
- Minimal risk: interviewing students who have disclosed disordered eating risks retraumatising them and blurs the line between research and support. The guideline distinguishes research from counselling for exactly this reason.
- Duty of care: if a participant discloses harm during an interview, the student researcher has no protocol and no authority to respond appropriately; the counsellor's absence from planning is a gap.
The feasibility argument ('my access makes it possible') is precisely what makes the ethics harder, not easier - proximity increases both access and risk.
2. Recommend an approval decision with conditions, and explain how it satisfies the guidelines.
Read the worked answer
Decision: modify, not approve or reject outright.
Conditions:
- Reframe the research question away from individual participants' bodies toward a less intrusive focus - for example, how body-image content is represented and discussed in online communities, using publicly available posts and secondary sources rather than personal disclosure.
- If any survey remains, administer it anonymously through a neutral channel, exclude the researcher's close friends from recruitment, and state clearly that participation is voluntary and unrelated to grades or friendship.
- Consult the school counsellor before any data collection, and include a written protocol: if a participant discloses distress, the student researcher pauses, does not probe, and refers to the counsellor.
- Remove the interviews with students who have disclosed disordered eating; they cannot give free consent in this context and the risk is not minimal.
This satisfies the guidelines because consent becomes genuinely voluntary, anonymity becomes credible, risk is reduced to minimal, and the research/counselling boundary is explicit. It also preserves the student's genuine interest while teaching that ethical constraints shape research design rather than being obstacles to route around.