[Air-L] ethics and listservs

[Rhiannon Bury]

Hi everyone

There has been a  development on an internal Faculty Association listserv at my university that I thought those of you interested in research ethics may wish to advise or comment on. 


First a little background. The provincial government hasdpromised to increase funding by 2% to postsecondary educaton sector last year. They reneged on that promise and slashed the budget by 7%. Our university Administration responded almost instantly by using a "financial stringency" clause in our collective agreement, giving lay off notices to about 25 academic and professional staff, included tenured faculty. We are a small university and so we have a faculty association listserv set up specifically for discussion of university issues. Tensions as you can imagine are running high and the listserv is very active. Like at most universities, there is tension between the Faculty of Business and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. 


Yesterday one member sent around an spreadsheet with what he described as "research" on how representative the discussion list was of the total membership. It included a list of the names of those who had contributed and ranked them in terms of the number of posts. He never stated his reasons for conducting such "research", although he did say that it is was an "internal document" for membership. Reaction was swift and explosive. Some people were outraged, claiming he had misused the list and their information. The list shows that majority of frequent posters were from one Faculty, leading some to state that this member, from the other faculty,  was really trying to demonstrate that their opinions, almost all critical of the university administration, were overrepresented. Others expressed fear that this information could be forwarded on to the Administration (the member is apparently tight with the Acting VPA) and then used to shape the next round of
 lay offs (ie get rid of the "trouble makers.") Still others thought there was nothing wrong with sharing such "data", some suggesting that it could be useful information to encourage more diverse opinion.

My feeling that it is completely unethical though because it is not formal research, it probably falls outside the purview of the Research Ethics Board. Still it does name names--had he just presented aggregated data grouped by Faculty, I don't think anyone would have said much of anything.  It would be like me collecting data on everyone's posts here and then presenting my findings with your names here out of the blue


Interested in your thoughts. 


Rhiannon


Rhiannon Bury
Associate Professor
Women's and Gender Studies
Athabasca University
rbury at athabascau.ca

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