Ethical Issues in Empirical Software Engineering: The Limits of Policy

Empirical studies in software engineering can involve a variety of organizations, each with their own set of policies and procedures geared at safeguarding the interests and responsibilities of the researchers, students, the collaborating company, the university, and possibly national funding agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. Each of these organizations have differing goals for participating in these studies and bring widely different cultures and expectations to the table. While policies, procedures, contracts, and agreements set expectations, they by themselves cannot ensure ethical behavior. This position paper describes some of the common approaches to encourage ethical behavior and their limits for enforcing ethical behavior.