1.2 Ethical Issues in Market Research

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with morality—what it means to behave morally and how people can achieve that goal. It can also refer to a set of principles and practices that provide moral guidance in a particular field. There are a variety of ethical standards in business, medicine, teaching, and market research. Many kinds of ethical issues can arise in research, especially when it involves human participants.

Here is a video that explains the difference between ethics and law, and introduces the concept of ethics in research.

In Canada, there is a best practice for ethics in research created by the Government of Canada, called the Panel for Research Ethics. This panel develops, interprets and implements the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, known as the TCPS 2.

The guidelines in the TCPS 2 are based on the following three core principles:

1. Respect for Persons: This includes respecting the autonomy of research participants by ensuring free, informed, and ongoing consent as well as protecting those “incapable of exercising autonomy because of youth, cognitive impairment, other mental health issues or illness.”
2. Concern for Welfare: This includes ensuring that participants are not exposed to unnecessary risks, considering participants’ privacy and maintaining their confidentiality, as well as providing participants with “enough information to be able to adequately assess risks and potential benefits associated with their participation in the research.”
3. Justice: This refers to the obligation to treat people fairly and equitably, including by considering the vulnerability of participants and ensuring that historically marginalized groups (including ethnocultural minorities) are not unjustly excluded from research opportunities.

References

Brown University. (2022). Research Ethics. Retrieved January 2, 2024, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtLPd2u4DiA

Chiang, I.-C. A., Jhangiani, R. S., & Price, P. C. (2015, October 13). Research methods in psychology – 2nd Canadian edition. Research Methods in Psychology 2nd Canadian Edition.  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Government of Canada. (2023, January 11). Tri-council policy statement: Ethical conduct for research involving humans – TCPS 2 (2022). Government of Canada, Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics.