Colleagues: On behalf of the AoIR ethics working committee, we are pleased to present to you our statement on ethical guidelines, revised in light of both aoir-list comments and comments received during the panel presentation on the statement at AoIR 3.0: <http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf>. (a) If you are a member of aoir (and if not, now might be a good time join - smile! - see <http://www.aoir.org/airjoin.html>) and (b) after you have had a chance to review the document (as well as the background information provided below), we would like to ask you to respond to the following question: "Should AoIR endorse the ethics working committee's statement on ethical decision-making (http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf) as its statement of principles of Internet research ethics, with the understanding that this statement is open to future revisions in light of additional ethical insight and/or new technological developments?" To do so, you will need to login to a members-only section of the aoir web site: please go to <http://aoir.org/members/modules.php?op=modload&name=Vote&file=index&qid=10> There you will see simply Question 1 : Should AoIR endorse the Research Ethics Statement followed by [radio button] Yes [radio button] No Please indicate your vote by clicking on the appropriate radio button, and then click on the "Submit" button. Voting is now open, and will close on midnight, Wednesday, November 27, 2002. We hope you will first review the background information provided below as a way of introducing you to the statement, its intended audience and purpose, and its defining characteristics. And, as noted, we hope that the statement will indeed be approved by AoIR, and thus provide us with the kind of ethics code that other professional organizations have developed for the use of their members. As always, we are grateful to the members of the ethics working committee for their hard work, deliberation, and insight - and to Jeremy Hunsinger, not only for his contributions as a member of the committee, but also for his invaluable support and assistance as our webmaster. Charles Ess Chair, AoIR ethics working committee Steve Jones President, AoIR BACKGROUND The AoIR ethics working committee has developed a statement on "Ethical decision-making and Internet research" (please see <www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf>). The statement provides a series of recommendations designed to support and inform those responsible for making decisions about the ethics of Internet research - researchers, ethicists, and related institutional bodies and academic organizations. The statement represents the collective debate and research of the ethics working committee, constituted in December, 2000, and made up of AoIR researchers and ethicists from eleven national cultures. (Committee members are listed in the statement.) It further incorporates criticisms and suggestions made by AoIR members over the past several months, as earlier drafts of the statement have been posted on the AoIR website for review and discussion by AoIR members on the AoIR mailing list. A (nearly final) draft was presented and discussed by a panel of ethics working committee members during AoIR 3.0, in a session attended by some 40+ conference participants. The statement is characterized by: * ethical pluralism - the view that more than one approach to and resolution of specific ethical problems can be legitimately defended; * cross-cultural awareness - the recognition that ethical decision-making approaches and defining values and priorities vary in important ways across diverse nations and cultures; * and the view that we can offer guidelines - but not "recipes" or algorithms that issue in a single, unequivocally "right" answer for every case and circumstance faced by Internet researchers. Rather, the statement attempts to help researchers, ethicists, and related organizational bodies recognize and work through specific ethical issues that commonly arise in Internet research - first of all, by providing a series of questions and suggestions. These questions and suggestions reflect not simply the collective insight and experience of the ethics committee and our AoIR contributors - but also our extensive discussion of what is (currently) the most comprehensive review of pertinent literature in Internet research ethics, the ethics and professional codes of the many disciplines at work in Internet research (from both social sciences and humanities), and philosophical ethics. (These and other helpful resources are collected in the form of appendices to the statement.) Unlike other professional organizations, Internet researchers - to this point - cannot turn to an ethics statement _for Internet researchers_ that is analogous to the ethics codes established by other professional organizations (e.g., the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Psychological Association, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, etc.) The statement by the ethics working committee, we hope, will fulfill that role for Internet researchers - but only, of course, if the AoIR membership approves it. We ask you to vote yes or no on this statement. The voting form on the AoIR website <http://www.aoir.org/members/index.php> provides a space for comments and suggestions, and the working committee welcomes these. But we are asking you to vote on the question of endorsing the current statement as it is now found at <www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf>. If approved by a majority of AoIR members who cast votes during the voting period (closing Monday, November 25, 2002), the statement will then be posted on the AoIR website as endorsed by AoIR - until such time as it may be replaced by a revised statement, developed as described above and likewise endorsed by a majority of AoIR members who cast votes during the prescribed voting period.