Week 4: Standards and Ethical Considerations

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. 

Reading Resources

Four Main Ethical Principles for Online Research (6:00 – 14:00)