Research ethics in applied linguistics

• Published in: Language teaching Vol. 56; no. 4; pp. 478 - 494
• Main Authors: Yaw, Katherine, Plonsky, Luke, Larsson, Tove, Sterling, Scott, Kytö, Merja
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.10.2023
• Subjects: Applied linguistics; Ethics; Informed consent; Language; Language Acquisition; Linguistics; Qualitative research; Research ethics; Research methodology; Research subjects; Research Timeline; Review boards; Social sciences; Teaching
• ISSN: 0261-4448; 1475-3049; 1475-3049
• DOI: 10.1017/S0261444823000010

For many researchers in the social sciences, including those in applied linguistics, the term ethics evokes the bureaucratic process of fulfilling the requirements of an ethics review board (e.g., in the US, an Institutional Review Board, or IRB) as a preliminary step in conducting human subjects research. The expansion of ethics review boards into the social sciences in the early 2000s has led applied linguistics as a field to experience what Haggerty (2004) termed ethics creep, a simultaneous expansion and intensification of external regulation of research activities. The aims of these ethical review boards are: (a) to evaluate the types and risk of harm to participants as a result of research activities, (b) ensure that participants can give informed consent to be part of the research activities, and (c) provide oversight on researcher procedures to maintain participant anonymity/confidentiality (Haggerty, 2004).