Bioethicists Today: Results of the Views in Bioethics Survey.

Bioethicists influence practices and policies in medicine, science, and public health. However, little is known about bioethicists' views. We recently surveyed 824 U.S. bioethicists on a wide range of ethical issues, including topics related to abortion, medical aid in dying, and resource allocation, among others. We also asked bioethicists about their demographic, religious, academic, and professional backgrounds. We find that bioethicists' normative commitments predict their views on bioethical issues. We also find that, in important ways, bioethicists' views do not align with those of the U.S. public: for instance, bioethicists are more likely than members of the public to think abortion is ethically permissible but are less likely to believe compensating organ donors is. Our demographic results indicate the field of bioethics is far less diverse than the U.S. population-less diverse even than other academic disciplines-suggesting far more work needs to be done to build an inclusive field.

Transparency in research: An analysis of ChatGPT usage acknowledgment by authors across disciplines and geographies.

This investigation systematically reviews the recognition of generative AI tools, particularly ChatGPT, in scholarly literature. Utilizing 1,226 publications from the Dimensions database, ranging from November 2022 to July 2023, the research scrutinizes temporal trends and distribution across disciplines and regions. U.S.-based authors lead in acknowledgments, with notable contributions from China and India. Predominantly, Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, as well as Information and Computing Sciences, are engaging with these AI tools. Publications like "The Lancet Digital Health" and platforms such as "bioRxiv" are recurrent venues for such acknowledgments, highlighting AI's growing impact on research dissemination. The analysis is confined to the Dimensions database, thus potentially overlooking other sources and grey literature. Additionally, the study abstains from examining the acknowledgments' quality or ethical considerations. Findings are beneficial for stakeholders, providing a basis for policy and scholarly discourse on ethical AI use in academia. This study represents the inaugural comprehensive empirical assessment of AI acknowledgment patterns in academic contexts, addressing a previously unexplored aspect of scholarly communication.

"Dogs on Call": A Community-Engaged Human Subjects Training with Hospital Based Therapy Dog Teams.

Problem: As community-engaged research (CER) methods evolve, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) must adapt policies to facilitate CER research. This paper describes a novel collaboration between hospital-based therapy dog volunteer teams (CERs), academic faculty, and an IRB. Subjects: CER volunteers delivered a canine-assisted intervention to hospitalized adults in a clinical trial. Methods: IRB members and faculty developed a human subjects protections training tailored to the volunteer handlers' role as study interventionists including an interactive video- and discussion-based training with a knowledge assessment. Findings: Fourteen volunteer handlers were trained. The expedited IRB review period was similar to national average rates (18 days.) Volunteer handlers have conducted 107 research visits with little patient attrition. Conclusion: Tailored human subjects trainings facilitate research with interventions delivered by people who are not typically involved in research. Bespoke CER human subjects training requires collaboration between researchers and IRBs and flexibility in IRB policy regarding CER.

Sampling Twitter users for social science research: evidence from a systematic review of the literature.

All social media platforms can be used to conduct social science research, but Twitter is the most popular as it provides its data via several Application Programming Interfaces, which allows qualitative and quantitative research to be conducted with its members. As Twitter is a huge universe, both in number of users and amount of data, sampling is generally required when using it for research purposes. Researchers only recently began to question whether tweet-level sampling-in which the tweet is the sampling unit-should be replaced by user-level sampling-in which the user is the sampling unit. The major rationale for this shift is that tweet-level sampling does not consider the fact that some core discussants on Twitter are much more active tweeters than other less active users, thus causing a sample biased towards the more active users. The knowledge on how to select representative samples of users in the Twitterverse is still insufficient despite its relevance for reliable and valid research outcomes. This paper contributes to this topic by presenting a systematic quantitative literature review of sampling plans designed and executed in the context of social science research in Twitter, including: (1) the definition of the target populations, (2) the sampling frames used to support sample selection, (3) the sampling methods used to obtain samples of Twitter users, (4) how data is collected from Twitter users, (5) the size of the samples, and (6) how research validity is addressed. This review can be a methodological guide for professionals and academics who want to conduct social science research involving Twitter users and the Twitterverse.

Mining and analysing online social networks: Studying the dynamics of digital peer support.

In recent years, the rapid growth of user-generated content has led to much research evaluating the patterns of online information exchange. These studies demonstrate that online communities are valuable data sources which provide rich, longitudinal data that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible to access. Given the increased research interest, mining and analysing online social networks has become an important research domain, encompassing a variety of approaches. To analyse the large number of observations commonly found in online communities, we propose to first mine the data using a so-called Webscraper and then combine Social Network Analysis (SNA) with Sentiment Analysis to explore both content and relationships. The hands-on approach described in this article is targeted at researchers without a background in technical disciplines. Instead of focusing on some of the specific algorithms that facilitate the mining and analysis of online data, we describe how to use and combine out-of-the-box solutions to collect and analyse the online network data. Moreover, we document the steps taken and present important lessons learnt throughout the process of collecting and analysing data from an online health community with 108,569 registered users who contributed to 197,980 discussions with a total of 484,250 replies. In sum, our method proposes to:•Extract all relevant data from an openly accessible online community using a Webscraper.•Determine and visualise the relationships between users and the properties of the social network as a whole using Social Network Analysis.•Conduct Sentiment Analysis to detect the emotional tone of the online contributions, and to possibly infer further variables from the text such as the personality characteristics of users.

Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022.

In an ever-increasingly online world, many Internet users seek information from online search engines such as Google. Accessing such search activity allows infodemiologists a glimpse into the collective online mind. Tools such as Google Trends and Google Health Trends (GHT) can be used to gauge search activity in key geographical regions and for specific periods of time. Recently, Google implemented changes to the GHT platform. Evidence is provided here for an initial exploration of how this change impacted the data obtained from GHT. Comparing 177 weekly probabilities for short search sessions of 421 Freebase IDs in thirty geographies extracted from GHT both before and after the implemented change, a low correlation (median of all Spearman ρ = 0.262 [IQR 0.04; 0.53]) between these data was observed for the year 2022. In general, the extracted values are higher after the implemented changes, compared to the values extracted before the change. Future research using the GHT API should not attribute increases in GHT data from 1 January 2022 onward as being reflective of increased search activity for a specific keyword, but rather attribute it to the implemented change to the GHT sampling strategy.

How do Research Ethics Committee Members Respond to Hypothetical Studies with Children? Results from the MESSI Study.

Hypothetical scenarios were used to assess the influence of the sensitivity of the study topic, payments, and study methods on research ethics committee (HREC) members' approval of social research studies involving children. A total of 183 Australian HREC members completed an online survey. The higher the perceived sensitivity of the study topic, the less likely the study would be approved by an HREC member. HREC members were most likely to approve each of the hypothetical studies if no payment was offered. Payment was the most common reason for not approving the low risk studies, while risks were the most common reasons for not approving the more sensitive studies. Face-to-face interviews conducted at home with children elicited substantially higher rates of approval from HREC members with more sensitive study topics. Both HRECs and researchers may benefit from additional guidance on managing risks and payments for children and young people in research.

Reactions to Laboratory-Based Trauma Research in a Sample of Incarcerated Women.

An evidence-based approach to research ethics is critical to ethical research but little is known about how trauma survivors-especially those from vulnerable populations-respond to laboratory-based trauma research. One hundred four incarcerated women (N = 64 rape survivors) reported their traumatic life experiences, listened to and responded to an audio recording of a dating interaction that culminates in a completed rape, and then reported their responses to their participation. Compared to the control group (N = 40), rape survivors (N = 64) had more posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and these symptoms were associated with more emotional responding. Both groups showed a positive benefit-cost ratio with regard to their participation did not differ on their overall reactions to research participation. These findings suggest that laboratory-based trauma research methods are associated with consistently positive experiences, which can help inform researchers and institutional review boards about the risks and benefits of such research.

Reviewer acknowledgment lists as data: Low-hanging fruit for analysis.

Many journals publish the names of reviewers in annual acknowledgement lists. For prestigious outlets, being named on such lists can constitute legitimation of expertise. Although designed to motivate service, this practice can be leveraged to address an important problem in the study of peer review-reliance on tightly held proprietary data. While certainly not without limitations, analysis of reviewer acknowledgement lists can help answer broad questions in the sociology of science concerning intra- and inter-disciplinary stratification. Results from a pilot study of publications in criminology and sociology are discussed.

Human Research Ethics Committee Experiences and Views About Children's Participation in Research: Results From the MESSI Study.

As part of a larger study, Australian Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) members and managers were surveyed about their decision-making and views about social research studies with child participants. Responses of 229 HREC members and 42 HREC managers are reported. While most HREC members had received ethical training, HREC training and guidelines specific to research involving children were rare. Most applications involving children had to go through a full ethical review, but few adverse events were reported to HRECs regarding the conduct of the studies. Revisions to study proposals requested by HRECs were mostly related to consent processes and age-appropriate language. One-third of HREC members said that they would approve research on any topic. Most were also concerned that the methodology was appropriate, and the risks and benefits were clearly articulated. Specific training and guidance are needed to increase HREC members' confidence to judge ethical research with children.

The Ethical Implications of Using Social Media to Engage and Retain Justice-Involved Youth in Behavioral Health Research.

Given its popularity among youth ages 13-17, social media is a promising avenue for engaging and retaining historically hard-to-reach youth in longitudinal research. Social media use in longitudinal research involving youth, however, has preceded development of best practices for ethical use. This article describes the ethical challenges and considerations of using social media to engage and retain youth within the context of a randomized controlled trial of a group-based adolescent substance use intervention. Best practices for addressing ethical challenges are also provided using the Belmont Principle as a guiding framework. As social media becomes more commonly used to engage and retain youth in clinical research studies, researchers must address emerging ethical concerns within project protocols.

Reliability of Google Trends: Analysis of the Limits and Potential of Web Infoveillance During COVID-19 Pandemic and for Future Research.

Background: Alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, government authorities around the world have had to face a growing infodemic capable of causing serious damages to public health and economy. In this context, the use of infoveillance tools has become a primary necessity. Objective: The aim of this study is to test the reliability of a widely used infoveillance tool which is Google Trends. In particular, the paper focuses on the analysis of relative search volumes (RSVs) quantifying their dependence on the day they are collected. Methods: RSVs of the query coronavirus + covid during February 1-December 4, 2020 (period 1), and February 20-May 18, 2020 (period 2), were collected daily by Google Trends from December 8 to 27, 2020. The survey covered Italian regions and cities, and countries and cities worldwide. The search category was set to all categories. Each dataset was analyzed to observe any dependencies of RSVs from the day they were gathered. To do this, by calling i the country, region, or city under investigation and j the day its RSV was collected, a Gaussian distribution X i = X ( σ i , x ¯ i ) was used to represent the trend of daily variations of x i j = R S V s i j . When a missing value was revealed (anomaly), the affected country, region or city was excluded from the analysis. When the anomalies exceeded 20% of the sample size, the whole sample was excluded from the statistical analysis. Pearson and Spearman correlations between RSVs and the number of COVID-19 cases were calculated day by day thus to highlight any variations related to the day RSVs were collected. Welch's t-test was used to assess the statistical significance of the differences between the average RSVs of the various countries, regions, or cities of a given dataset. Two RSVs were considered statistical confident when t < 1.5 . A dataset was deemed unreliable if the confident data exceeded 20% (confidence threshold). The percentage increase Δ was used to quantify the difference between two values. Results: Google Trends has been subject to an acceptable quantity of anomalies only as regards the RSVs of Italian regions (0% in both periods 1 and 2) and countries worldwide (9.7% during period 1 and 10.9% during period 2). However, the correlations between RSVs and COVID-19 cases underwent significant variations even in these two datasets ( M a x   | Δ |   =   +   625 % for Italian regions, and M a x   | Δ | =   + 175 %   for countries worldwide). Furthermore, only RSVs of countries worldwide did not exceed confidence threshold. Finally, the large amount of anomalies registered in Italian and international cities' RSVs made these datasets unusable for any kind of statistical inference. Conclusion: In the considered timespans, Google Trends has proved to be reliable only for surveys concerning RSVs of countries worldwide. Since RSVs values showed a high dependence on the day they were gathered, it is essential for future research that the authors collect queries' data for several consecutive days and work with their RSVs averages instead of daily RSVs, trying to minimize the standard errors until an established confidence threshold is respected. Further research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this method.

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats.

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security.

Dataset on the production, dissemination and uptake of social science research in Nigeria.

This dataset presents data collected from three surveys, each among researchers, research administrators and policymakers across the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The data were collected from 513 researchers, 118 research administrators and 60 policymakers drawn from randomly selected organizations that are implicated in Social Science Research (SSR) in Nigeria, which include: 53 universities; 5 research institutes; 17 government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and donors; 9 private consultancies; 26 civil society organisations, private consultancies; and 7 Houses of Assembly. The surveys assessed several factors that impart the production, dissemination and uptake of social science research (SSR) in Nigeria, including research personnel, funding, infrastructure, mentoring, communication practices and products, policy-friendliness, among many others. The data are important in understanding the status of SSR and its potential to influence sustainable development in a typical developing country like Nigeria. The usefulness of the data is many folds as every stakeholder in the research-policy-development nexus is implicated. Ultimately, the data is useful in characterizing SSR system and formulating policies to boost its status and potential.

Immediate and Delayed Reactions to Trauma-related Laboratory Research Among Rape Survivors and Controls.

Ethical implications of laboratory-based experimental trauma research are not well studied. Female rape survivors (N = 62) and controls (N = 79) listened to an audio recording of a sexual assault and completed mental health measures and the Reactions to Research Participation Questionnaire-Revised in the first session and again several weeks later. In the first session, mental health symptoms were associated with stronger emotional reactions and personal benefits from participation. Rape survivors also reported stronger emotional reactions than controls, but also more personal benefits, more satisfaction, and fewer perceived drawbacks from participation. Several weeks later, both groups reported diminished posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and rape survivors' reports of stronger emotional reactions and greater satisfaction with their participation remained significant. Benefit-cost ratios indicate positive responses to participation across groups and time. Findings suggest significant benefits to laboratory trauma research for participants.

Comparing Payments Between Sociobehavioral and Biomedical Studies in a Large Research University in Southern California.

Given the dearth of regulatory guidance and empirical research on practices of providing payments to research participants, our study aimed to examine whether there were significant differences in payment amounts between sociobehavioral and biomedical studies and to examine study factors that may explain payment differences. This study reviewed 100 sociobehavioral and 31 biomedical protocols. Results showed that both biomedical studies and sociobehavioral studies had a wide variation of payments and, on average, the biomedical studies paid significantly more. Additionally, more biomedical studies offered payment than sociobehavioral studies. The primary factors that explained differences in payment amounts between sociobehavioral and biomedical studies were the number of study visits, study time, participation type, risk level, and research method. These findings provide pilot data to help inform future ethical decision-making and guidance regarding payment practices.

Impacts of social distancing during COVID-19 pandemic on the daily life of forestry students.

University life has changed profoundly due to social distancing measures to control the spread of COVID-19. Over the longer term, the coronavirus crisis may affect the mental health of undergraduate students who are required to cope with remote options and forgo the usual campus life. The aim of this study is thus to investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on undergraduate students' mental health and daily life in order to assist policymakers improve pandemic control plans and help educators and healthcare experts provide support to affected undergraduates. Results are based on quantitative data collected via online questionnaires which were completed by 181 Greek undergraduate forestry students. The analysis indicated that the students were highly affected by the closure of universities and the transition to distance learning. Moreover, they experienced negative emotions, mostly concern and anger, during the lockdown. T-test showed that female respondents experienced strong negative emotions like fear, panic and despair to a higher degree than male students who were more optimistic about the pandemic. Surprisingly, the students did not exercise outdoors every day even though it was allowed during the 42-day quarantine. In addition, they used mostly television and scientific articles to obtain information about COVID-19. The results presented in this study offer insights into university students' experience with the pandemic and reveal their reaction to remote education. It is recommended to monitor university students' mental health frequently and to provide them with psychological counselling and practical advice on how to manage anxiety and fear. Finally, education and training on remote learning could help reduce students' anxiety over online classes and exams.