Ethical Research With Sexual and Gender Minorities

The second half of the 20th century saw a dramatic increase in the focus on ethical concerns related to research with human subjects. This was in large part due to the world’s becoming aware of severe ethical transgressions in human research that had taken place in the previous half-century, including the Nazi regime’s torturous experiments on humans. By 1974, all institutions in the United States receiving federal funding for behavioral or biomedical research were required to have an institutional review board (IRB) to evaluate the ethical foundations of all research conducted with human subjects.

This entry discusses the history of research ethics as they apply to LGBTQ research; the debate concerning whether or not LGBTQ individuals should be considered a “vulnerable population”; methods of best practice ...