Individuals with intellectual disabilities can serve as members of the research team in both qualitative and quantitative studies.

Research Involvement of Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

To justify exposing participants to risks, there is an expectation that the results lead to an improvement in health, well-being, or an increase in knowledge. This requirement protects participants from being exposed to unjustified risks. It also ensures that funds are being used responsibly. 


Social/Scientific Value

The use of accepted scientific principles and methods to produce reliable and valid data

Scientific Validity

The minimization risks and enhancement of potential benefits. Research should only expose participants to risks (eg. psychological, physical, or economic burdens) that are necessary to obtain the relevant scientific data.

Favorable Risk–Benefit Ratio

A review by individuals unfamiliar with the research. Consists of reviewing the research trial design, the proposed participant selection, and it's risk-benefit ratio.

Independent Review Boards

This article explores the ethical issues of healthy individuals using pharmaceutical cognitive enhancers like modafinil to boost focus and performance. It raises concerns about fairness, social pressure, personal authenticity, and health risks, arguing that such use may deepen inequality and normalize drug use for non-medical purposes. The authors call for public education, regulation, and further research to address the societal and ethical challenges posed by cognitive enhancement.

Ethical Aspects of the Abuse of Pharmaceutical Enhancements by Healthy People in the Context of Improving Cognitive Functions

This article explores how nonmedical use of ADHD medications by healthy students is widely seen—especially by those with genuine ADHD diagnoses—as unethical and unfair. Students with ADHD express frustration that their necessary treatment is being misused as a performance enhancer by peers who often have greater social and economic privilege. This off-label use not only trivializes their medical needs but also reinforces inequality, creates stigma, and fuels suspicion from healthcare providers, making it harder for them to access proper care. 

"The White Version of Cheating?" Ethical and Social Equity Concerns of Cognitive Enhancing Drug Users in Higher Education.

The article reviews how individuals with ADHD experience public stigma, self-stigma, and courtesy stigma, with a particular focus on the harmful effects of internalizing negative societal attitudes. It explains that skepticism toward ADHD diagnoses and treatments—especially medication—can lead people with ADHD to hide their condition, reject support, and feel ashamed of their needs. This stigma, especially when internalized, negatively impacts self-esteem, treatment adherence, and overall quality of life.

Stigma in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder 

The article highlights how adolescents with ADHD navigate their sense of self within social and medical contexts that often frame neurodivergence as a deficit. While the diagnosis itself could serve as an important narrative for understanding their experiences, it was the visible symptoms of ADHD that tended to attract stigma. Medication also played a complicated role in identity, with some adolescents feeling pressured to use stimulants in order to meet social and academic norms, even at the cost of feeling “not themselves.” A recurring pattern was that adolescents downplayed their individual identity in order to preserve relationships and meet expectations, underscoring how ableist frameworks continue to shape what is considered acceptable behavior and belonging.

ADHD and Identity Formation: Adolescents' Experiences From the Healthcare System and Peer Relationships

The article emphasizes that justice in research must extend beyond equitable selection also to ensure that disabled participants benefit from the knowledge and interventions their involvement makes possible. Too often, disabled people contribute data and bear risks, yet structural barriers and ableist research priorities prevent them from accessing the outcomes. From this perspective, advancing justice requires participatory research models that elevate disabled voices, challenge “normalizing” assumptions, and work toward a fairer redistribution of research benefits.

Implementing Justice in Research: Beyond Equitable Selection 

Ashley Shew critiques how conversations about AI often reproduce ableist assumptions. Shew argues that mainstream visions of AI and robotics frequently frame disability as a problem to be solved through technological intervention, rather than recognizing disabled people as central voices in shaping technological futures. The concept of technoableism describes this tendency to privilege high-tech “fixes” and idealized notions of ability, while sidelining the lived experiences and innovations of disabled communities. Shew calls for shifting perspectives so that AI development does not reinforce narrow standards of normalcy or perpetuate exclusion, but instead includes disabled people’s expertise, values, and critiques in imagining more just technological futures.

Ableism, Technoableism, and Future AI

The article argues that bias against disabled people in AI systems often begins long before algorithms are trained—it starts with how “disability” itself is defined. Drawing on disability models like the medical and social frameworks, the authors show that these definitions shape data collection, system goals, and deployment, often embedding ableist assumptions. They emphasize that true fairness requires transparency about these definitions, participatory design with disabled people, and a structural lens that moves beyond abstract metrics to confront cultural and systemic ableism.

Definition Drives Design: Disability Models and Mechanisms of Bias in AI Technologies 

Shelley Tremain argues that disability should not be understood as a fixed biological condition or a stable identity, but as a product of historically specific relations of power and knowledge. Drawing on Foucault’s concepts of discourse and governmentality, she contends that disability is continually produced through social, political, and institutional practices that define what counts as normal, valuable, or functional. Tremain challenges liberal and bioethical approaches that assume disability merely needs to be accommodated, showing instead how such frameworks reinforce ableist norms by naturalizing them. Ultimately, she calls for a historicist and feminist genealogy of disability—one that exposes how philosophical and scientific traditions have governed disabled bodies and minds through the very act of defining them.

This Is What a Historicist and Relativist Feminist Philosophy of Disability Looks Like

In “A Naturalized Narrative,” Tremain argues that disability is not a fixed biological fact but a socially and politically produced category. She critiques how dominant narratives treat disability as “natural,” masking the ways that institutions, medical discourse, and power relations actually create and sustain it. Drawing on Foucault, Tremain shows that disability is an effect of biopower—a system that defines, regulates, and normalizes bodies in ways that uphold ableist norms.

Chapter 1 Section 1: A Naturalized Narrative 

The inclusion of individuals with disabilities in research is a debated topic lacking protocol. 

Cedarville University

Arizona State University

- Disability History
- Theories/Definitions of Disability
- Disability Legislation/Policy
- Disability Culture
- Accessibility
- Types of Disability 
- Economic Impacts of Disability
- Inclusive Education and Community Support 
- Black Disability Studies

Topics in Disability Studies

Research involves significant ethical considerations, as participants have rights and investigators have responsibilities towards them. The American Psychological Association published an updated set of ethical standards in 2002. However, these guidelines were not always applied in the past, and historical studies often involved major ethical violations that prompted the development of modern standards.

Research and Ethics

The study of the impact disability has on individual's wealth.

Economic Impacts of Disability

The differences in norms, lifestyles, and social identities, propagated among disabled individuals. It often forms as a reaction toward past and present attitudes towards disabled communities. It promotes connection, camaraderie, and a shared purpose among those in the community. It also includes a motivation for people with disabilities to address their own civil, social, political, and economic needs

Disability Culture

Laws and policies created by governments and government agencies in order to protect the rights of disabled individuals. 

Disability Rights Legislation 

Ensuring that all people have the ability to utilize a product, facility, or service, regardless of any disability they may have. Accessibility may include the modification of existing infrastructure, products, or services or designing them with disabled users in mind.

Accessibility

While not all disabilities can fit neatly into one category, these categories generally encapsulate the types of disabilities through the Impairment Dimension.

-	Cognitive / Intellectual 
-	Chronic Illnesses 
-	Developmental
-	Mental 
-	Physical / Sensory
-	Speech / Communication


Types of Disabilities

Defining disability, what it is and importantly who is included inside of it, remains controversial among different disciplines. This can lead to justice issues and denial of care for individuals who may not fit some definitions of disability and yet still identify as disabled.

Challenges in Defining Disability

The evolution of how every topic regarding disabilities has changed over time throughout the world.

History of Disability Studies

To address some of the ideological disconnects between educators and parents, researchers have suggested teachers consider a Disability Studies (DS) framework as they collaborate with families on the IEP process. Scholars approaching DS through 
an educational lens applies the constructing pieces of disability studies to the exploration of disability in school contexts.

Using The Framework of Disability studies to Formulate An IEP

Abosi, O., & Koay, T. L. (2008). Attaining Development Goals of Children with Disabilities: Implications for Inclusive Education. International Journal of Special Education, 23(3), 1–10. 

Attaining Developmental Goals of Children with Disabilities: Implications for Inclusive Education

The aim of inclusive education is to help people with disabilities live independent lives in their communities by allowing them access to equal educational and social opportunities. It eliminates discrimination in education by approaching differences with consideration, patience, and compassion. 

Aim of Inclusive Education

A caregiver is the parent or other family member that is responsible for parenting or caring for a child with a disability. A caregiver provides daily unpaid support for a person who is unable to perform the necessary tasks for daily living.

Caregivers

Disability Studies Research Ethics

Concepts of Research Standards

Read the following research proposal. Based on general ethical principles for psychological research, identify and evaluate the most significant ethical problem with this study's methodology. Justify your evaluation.

Ethical Evaluation of a Research Proposal

One of the earliest ethics codes, the Nuremberg Code is a set of 10 principles established in 1947 in conjunction with the trials of Nazi physicians accused of cruel research on concentration camp prisoners during World War II. It provided a standard to evaluate the behavior of the men on trial and was particularly clear about the critical importance of carefully weighing risks against benefits and the necessity of obtaining informed consent from participants.

Nuremberg Code

First published in $$1953$$ and periodically revised, the APA’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct includes approximately $$150$$ specific ethical standards that psychologists and their students must follow. While much of the code addresses clinical practice, it is particularly relevant to psychological research because it provides detailed, enforceable guidance on issues where general moral principles might be interpreted differently. Standard $$8$$ (Research and Publication) establishes mandatory requirements for institutional approval, informed consent, the regulation of deception, debriefing, animal care, and scholarly integrity.

APA Ethics Code

The Tuskegee syphilis study, conducted by the US Public Health Service from 1932 to 1972, is a tragic historical example of extreme injustice in scientific research. The study involved poor African American men in Alabama who were misled into believing they were receiving treatment for 'bad blood' while actually being observed for the untreated progression of syphilis. The researchers deliberately denied the men treatment even after penicillin became the standard cure, clearly violating the ethical mandate to treat participants fairly and highlighting the urgent need to protect marginalized groups from disproportionate research risks. The profound betrayal of these men was formally acknowledged in 1997 when President Bill Clinton issued a public apology on behalf of the US government, emphasizing how the participants had been exploited without their knowledge or consent.

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