Review and revision

1. ETHICAL ISSUES IN
RESEARCH
© LOUIS COHEN, LAWRENCE MANION,
KEITH MORRISON

2. STRUCTURE OF THE CHAPTER
• Informed consent, access and acceptance
• The field of ethics and sources of tension
• Voices of experience
• Ethical dilemmas
• Privacy, anonymity and confidentiality
• Against privacy, confidentiality and anonymity
• Ethics in electronic research
• Betrayal and deception
• Ethics and evaluative research
• Research and regulation: ethical codes
and review boards
• Sponsored research
• Responsibilities to the research community

3. FOUR LAYERS OF ETHICAL DECISIONS
(Seedhouse, 1998)
• External (e.g. codes of practice, laws);
• Consequential (consequences for
individuals, groups, society);
• Deontological (what is one’s duty to
do);
• Individual (respect for individual
freedom and autonomy).

4. ETHICAL FOUNDATIONS
• Virtue ethics
– Pursue what is good simply because it is
good and right.
• Situational ethics
– What we should do or what is right to do
depends on the situation in question

5. THE COSTS-BENEFITS RATIO
Do the benefits outweigh the
disadvantages?
• Social benefits of research endeavours against the
personal costs to the individuals taking part.
• Failure to do the research may cost society the
advantages of the opportunity to improve the
human condition.
• Costs to participants may include affronts to dignity,
embarrassment, loss of trust in social relations,
loss of autonomy and self-determination, and
lowered self-esteem.
• Benefits to participants may be the satisfaction in
making a contribution to science and a greater
personal understanding of the area under scrutiny.

6. INFORMED CONSENT
1. Explain the study, its purposes, contents, benefits, any
dangers or discomforts (and long-term effects).
2. Explain what is involved of the participant.
3. Explain rights, protections and liabilities.
4. Explain rights to voluntary non-participation/partial
participation/withdrawal.
5. Rights and obligations of confidentiality, anonymity, non-
traceability.
6. Answer any questions about the study and the procedures.
7. Obtain informed consent (including, where relevant,
permission from parents/guardians and other appropriate
parties), where appropriate, in writing.
Justify not obtaining informed consent (e.g. for covert
research).

7. DECEPTION
1. Telling a lie
2. Telling only part of the truth
3. Not telling the whole story
Is deception justified, in the interests of:
• Public good
• Preventing biasing the respondents
• Enabling natural behaviour to be observed
• Protecting confidentiality of a third party

8. ACCESS AND ACCEPTANCE
• Access requires formal and informal permission and
clearance from relevant parties.
• Achieving goodwill and cooperation.
• Sensitive entry to the research location.
• Be prepared for negotiation of what can/cannot be done.
• Seek informed consent.
• Give all participants the chance to remain anonymous.
• Ensure that all data are given in strict confidentiality.
• Seek respondent validation.
• Be prepared to give participants a copy of the final report.
• Permission for publication may need to be gained from the
participants.
• Where possible, the research report should be of benefit to
the school and participants.

9. THE FIELD OF ETHICS
• Respect dignity and rights of
participants.
• Attend to the sensitivity of the research.
• Control and ownership of the data (e.g.
during and after the research has
ended).
• Publication rights and duties.

10. A MAJOR ETHICAL TENSION
PUBLIC’S INDIVIDUAL’S
RIGHT RIGHT
TO KNOW TO PRIVACY
FREE
SCIENTIFIC NON-
ENQUIRY MALEFICENCE
& CAREER AND
ADVANCE- BENEFICENCE
MENT

11. AVOID DOING HARM
• Use computer simulations.
• Find a situation in which the negative effects of harm already
exist, i.e. where the research does not have the responsibility
for having produced these conditions.
• Apply only a very low level of potential harm, or for only a short
period of time, so that any effects are minimal.
• Informed consent (provide details of the potential negative
effects and secure participants’ consent).
• Justify the research on the grounds that the limited harm
caused is much less than the harm caused by the existing
situation (which the research is trying to improve).
• Use samples rather than complete populations, so that fewer
people are exposed to the harm.
• Maintain the privacy of participants through the use of
aggregated or anonymized data.

12. ETHICAL DILEMMAS
• Involving people without their knowledge or consent.
• Coercing people to participate.
• Withholding information about the true nature of the research,
or otherwise deceiving participants.
• Inducing people to commit acts diminishing their self-esteem.
• Violating rights of self-determination (e.g. in studies seeking to
promote individual change).
• Exposing participants to physical or mental stress.
• Invading their privacy.
• Withholding benefits from some participants (e.g. in
comparison groups).
• Not treating participants fairly, or with consideration, or with
respect.
• Breaching trust.

13. PRIVACY
• Privacy trumps other concerns in research.
• Privacy of people and settings.
• Privacy is a basic human need.
• The greater the sensitivity of the information,
the more safeguards are needed to protect
the privacy of participants.
• Privacy can be voluntarily relinquished by
informed consent.

14. ANONYMITY AND CONFIDENTIALITY
• Participants, groups, institutions, locations should be
non-traceable unless there is a good reasons for this
not to happen.
• Some individuals, groups, institutions will want to be
identified; respect this.
• It should not be possible to reconstruct or
reassemble data in order to identify people, groups,
institutions, locations, or, where it is possible, it will
not be put into the public domain.
• Researches can take steps to guarantee that they,
too, do not know who respondents are (e.g. double
blind experiments, anonymous questionnaires).

15. ANONYMITY AND CONFIDENTIALITY
• Ensure in advance that promises of anonymity
and confidentiality can actually be kept.
• Ensure that participants understand anonymity,
non-traceability and confidentiality.
• Justify covert research.
• Justify dishonesty/telling lies to ensure non-
traceability (e.g. ‘putting people off the scent’ of
participants).
• How can ‘thick descriptions’ avoid identifying
participants/groups/institutions/locations?

16. Protect
Protect safety
Protect
confiden-
well-being
tiality
RESPONSIBILITY
Protect Protect
TO RESEARCH
anonymity reputations
COLLEAGUES
Keep to
Ethical
agreed Do not
procedures
behaviour
jeopardize future
research

17. Researcher
competence
Integrity of
Rigour
research
Report RESPONSIBILITY Report
accurately TO RESEARCH clearly
Honesty Don’t Fairness
jeopardize future
research