Venkatesh's Gang Leader For A Day

In Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day, he violated many ethical codes when conducting his research in the Robert Taylor Homes. The ASA “Code of Ethics” states that there are four rules “1. To protect research subjects, 2. To maintain honesty and openness, 3. To achieve valid results, 4. To encourage appropriate application”(47 Chambliss & Schutt). Given these four guidelines we can see that Venkatesh’s work is in violation. A few examples are his lack of informed consent, an occurrence of deception that helped him receive his data, as well as the lack of confidentiality that the experiment had. The first example is the idea of rule two with informed consent. When Venkatesh first starts collecting his data, he has the opportunity to ask J.T. and the gang his first questions. Venkatesh states “I explained the project as best as I could. It was being overseen by a national poverty expert”(15 Venkatesh). Here is proof that the boys originally understand what kind of data collection is happening, but Venkatesh fails to receive any sort of informed consent from any of the men. J.T. responds to the question, but there is never the required step of acknowledging the consent. Later the issue is readdressed when Venkatesh is quoted “I realized I had

With this outside view, it is likely that he would have automatically viewed them in a negative light, along with the fact that the people he was interviewing would have reacted negatively towards him. Venkatesh says “Most tenants probably would have stopped speaking with me if they thought I was even remotely tied to the police”(242 Venkatesh). This shows that if Venkatesh would have used access through the police, the people he met and relied on throughout the study most likely wouldn't of let him be present or participate in any of the activities he was able to witness through his