Ethics Creep Within Sex and Trauma Studies: A Partial Replication and Expansion Study - David Hattie, Pearl Meredith, Pallavi Nair, Amanda R. Champion, & Cory L. Pedersen

 

Though REBs perform a vital role in institutional research, there is concern that increasing bureaucracy, intensified regulations, and lack of empiricism in risk assessments have resulted in a phenomenon referred to as ethics creep (Haggerty, 2004), wherein REB guidelines are increasingly strict and preclude advancing projects. Particularly, research examining marginalized populations risk termination based on REB concerns regarding welfare, and this is especially pertinent in sex/trauma research. However, there is evidence indicating that such research may not be as harmful as presumed (Yeater et al., 2012). Our study examined whether participation in a sex/trauma research condition poses increased risk relative to a seemingly innocuous cognitive condition. We hypothesized that participants would report overall greater benefit and less costs of participation in the sex research condition, and that queer participants’ levels of distress would not significantly differ from those of cisgender and heterosexual participants. 

 

Participants (N = 814) completed a pretest questionnaire measuring positive/negative affect and were then randomly assigned to either a cognitive condition (8 randomized cognitive questionnaires) or a sex/trauma condition (8 randomized sexuality/trauma questionnaires). Following completion, participants in both conditions complete the same 3 post-test measures: (1) positive/negative affect, (2) post-study reactions in terms of cost and benefit, and (3) a measure of whether participation in the study was more or less distressing than numerous life stressors experienced regularly. Analyses support our hypotheses. Results suggested no greater risk to participants in sex studies – regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation identification – relative to more innocuous cognitive-based research. Indeed, cognitive measures produced greater negative outcomes than the sexuality & trauma-related measures and sexual minority participants were not more likely to experience greater negative outcomes than sexual majority participants.

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Oral presentation delivered at the Canadian Sex Research Forum, Vancouver, 2025.