Do Ethics Matter to Researchers? Introducing the Ethics References in Conflict Studies (ERICS) Dataset

Abstract

Abstract Research on conflict frequently employs data collection methods that involve interaction with human subjects. Given the ethical issues raised by engagement with human subjects, recent work has called on scholars to foreground consideration of ethics at all stages of the research process, from design to post-publication. However, whether researchers, editors, and reviewers treat ethics as if they matter is a separate, empirical question. To address this question, this research note introduces and describes the Ethics References in Conflict Studies (ERICS) dataset, which documents references to ethics from 2014 through 2021 in five leading Political Science journals that regularly publish conflict research involving human subjects. The ERICS dataset indicates that discussions of ethics are relatively infrequent and cursory, with only 34.57 percent of human subjects research articles incorporating any reference to ethics; this dataset also indicates that ethics are most frequently discussed in footnotes and endnotes and that a single sentence is the modal length of discussions of ethics in these journals. However, the ERICS dataset also indicates that ethics references have increased over time and that there is considerable variation between journals. This note concludes by proposing several possible uses of ERICS, including an analysis of factors such as author and journal characteristics that may influence engagement with ethics in published work.