Capella University Research Center

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Ethical Principles

Capella University's HRPP is committed to upholding the ethical principles described in the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, and The Belmont Report. These principles, translated and embedded in federal and state regulations that mandate informed consent and the establishment of Independent Review Boards (IRBs), guide Capella's review of research with human participants and provide the ethical foundations and spirit of Capella's HRPP.

The consideration of the Belmont Report include the following principles, which are fundamental to the protection of human participants in research:

Respect for Persons

This principle acknowledges the participant's autonomy and the researcher's obligation to respect that autonomy. It also protects participants with diminished autonomy (e.g., children) from possible exploitation.

From this principle of respect for persons comes the informed consent process in which researchers must provide potential participants with information about the study in a manner they can understand and then allow them to choose whether or not they wish to participate.

Beneficence

This principle obligates the researcher to protect participants from harm as well as to maximize the anticipated benefits of the research and minimize possible risks resulting from the research.

To apply the principle of beneficence, researchers and IRB reviewers analyze the risks and benefits to the participants to ensure that the anticipated risks are commensurate with the potential benefits. In every study researchers should minimize the risks as much as possible.

Justice

This principle requires the equitable distribution of both the benefits and the burdens of research.

Implementing the principle of justice requires researchers to avoid selecting participants solely because they are accessible or easy to influence. In addition, it charges researchers not to exclude participants who are likely to benefit from a study.