Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34253610›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021

A call for structured ethics appendices in social science papers.

Edward Asiedu, Dean Karlan, Monica Lambon-Quayefio, Christopher Udry

Open access · greenAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
8citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact, top 95% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

8 citing papers in PubMed, 0 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Ethical oversight in impact evaluations: External advisory committees to assess programming risks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  2. Article
  3. Vulnerability in research ethics: A call for assessing vulnerability and implementing protections.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Synthesizing evidence in sustainability science through harmonized experiments: Community monitoring in common pool resources.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021
    Article
  8. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Edward AsieduDepartment of Finance, University of Ghana Business School, Accra, Ghana.ORCID 0000-0003-0840-9233
Dean KarlanKellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; dean.karlan@gmail.com.ORCID 0000-0003-0164-1398
Monica Lambon-QuayefioDepartment of Economics, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
Christopher UdryDepartment of Economics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.ORCID 0000-0002-1605-1916
Northwestern University · USUniversity of Ghana · GH

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Ethics in social science experimentation and data collection are often discussed but rarely articulated in writing as part of research outputs. Although papers typically reference human subjects research approvals from relevant institutional review boards, most recognize that such boards do not carry out comprehensive ethical assessments. We propose a structured ethics appendix to provide details on the following: policy equipoise, role of the researcher, potential harms to participants and nonparticipants, conflicts of interest, intellectual freedom, feedback to participants, and foreseeable misuse of research results. We discuss each of these and some of the norms and challenging situations of each. We believe that discussing such issues explicitly in appendices of papers, even if briefly, will serve two purposes: more complete communication of ethics can improve discussions of papers and can clarify and improve the norms themselves.

Indexed as

Ethics Committees, ResearchEthics, ResearchHumansPublicationsRandomized Controlled Trials as TopicResearch PersonnelSocial Sciencesethicsmethodologyprimary data collectionrandomized controlled trialssurveys

Identifiers

PMID34253610
PMCPMC8307908
OpenAlexW3148393818

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.