Developing a Social Responsibility Tool-Kit for Scientists Working on Cleanup Sites

The goal of this research is to develop empirically based tools to enable environmental cleanup researchers to better incorporate social responsibility best practices into their scientific projects. The specific goals are to (1) describe the social values that influence research at three different cleanup sites, (2) Identify how stakeholders at cleanup sites perceive the ethical integration of social values and epistemic values in research studies, and (3) develop a tool to promote social responsibility in translational research conducted at cleanup sites that can be used and further developed in the future. Methods will include ethnographic participant-observation fieldwork, qualitative interviews, and focus groups with stakeholders at three different environmental cleanup sites in Texas and Louisiana that are in the cleanup process. We will also gather key policy and programmatic documents related to cleanup activities at the sites and the history of the communities where cleanups are happening. The intended audience for this study and the social responsibility tool that we will create will be researchers and their collaborators working at environmental cleanup sites.