Bmc Med Ethics
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Surveys on attitudes towards assisted dying play an important role in informing public debate, policy and legislation. Unfortunately, surveys are often designed with insufficient attention to framing effects; that is, effects on the respondents' stated attitudes caused by question wording and context. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate and measure such framing effects. ⋯ Stakeholders in the assisted dying debate need to acknowledge potential framing effects, and accordingly should interpret survey results with caution. The same holds for researchers who conduct attitude surveys in the field of bioethics.
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In research ethics, the most basic question would always be, "which is an ethical issue, which is not?" Interestingly, depending on which ethics guideline we consult, we may have various answers to this question. Though we already have several international ethics guidelines for biomedical research involving human participants, ironically, we do not have a harmonized document which tells us what these various guidelines say and shows us the areas of consensus (or lack thereof). In this manuscript, we attempted to do just that. ⋯ There was a lack of consensus in the majority of imperatives from the five internationally-known ethics guidelines. This may be partly explained by the differences among the guidelines in terms of their levels of specification as well as conceptual/ideological differences.