Week 4: Standards and Ethical Considerations
Orientation
Different subject areas will have different emphasis on various aspects of ethical research behaviour, and different levels of sensitivity, depending on the proposed research activities. For example, working with animals, vulnerable people, and personal health care, will have to be aware of a greater duty of care for the participants than a street-based opinion poll. What is almost certainly consistent is that the claim that ‘there are no ethical issues relating to my research’ is almost always incorrect. All disciplines have some kind of research standard to which practitioners are expected to adhere. As a general rule, the research standards in a given discipline are where a researcher should begin their own review for a new research endeavour. All research standards have some type of expectation for ethical standards. Others, like medical disciplines such as nursing, will have substantive guidelines regarding the protection of participants, with an expectation of privacy that protects an individual’s identity as well as the information they provide in a study.
On Successful Completion of this Week, Students will be Able to:
This week provides you with an overview about how to conduct research in an appropriate and ethical way, different issues in conducting research online, and how to become an ethical online researcher.
Reading Resources
-
- Salmons, J. (2016). Becoming an ethical online rresearcher. In Doing qualitative research online (pp. 55-95). SAGE Publications Ltd
- Hooley, T., Wellens, J., & Marriott, J. (2012). Chapter 3: Dealing ethical issues in online research. In What is Online research?: Using the Internet for social science research (pp. 25-38). A&C Black. 10.5040/9781849665544.ch-003
- Roberts, L. D. (2015). Ethical issues in conducting qualitative research in online communities. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 12(3), 314-325.
- Eynon, R., Fry, J., & Schroeder, R. (2017). The ethics of Internet research. In The SAGE handbook of online research methods (pp. 22-42). SAGE Publications, Ltd
- James, N., & Busher, H. (2007). Ethical issues in online educational research: protecting privacy, establishing authenticity in email interviewing. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 30(1), 101-113.
Supplementary Resources
Four Main Ethical Principles for Online Research (6:00 – 14:00)
The Ethics in Social Research
SAGE Webinar: Engaged and Ethical Online Research
