5.

Ethics in research

What is an ethical researcher?

 Scope
• Refer to the 6 Ps of research and paying
particular attention on the participants.

Participants

Purpose Proces Product Presentatio

s n

Paradigm
 Overview of ethics
• Ethics is the study of the moral standards and how
they affect conduct and involves treating everyone
involved in the research directly or indirectly fairly and
with honestly.
• The rights and responsibility of those involved in the
research is increasingly becoming more of an
acceptable practice.
• Institution might require an ethical undertaking before
a research work is carried out. For a student, an
ethical questionnaire must be completed, and duly
discussed with the supervisor, thereafter further
instruction agreed on the course of action to be taken.
 Identify research participants
• people directly involved in the research:
people that would be interviewed,
observed, respond to questionnaire, or
supply documents
• The researcher and the research team
• the members of the academic community
who will read, review and learn from
your research
• people who may use or be affected by
the technology that you design
 Legal issues
• The specific data protection rights of individuals,
and duties of organisation that hold personal
data on individual eg prisoner, patients, financial
data
• Whether it is permissible to give incentives to
your participants to participate
• Intellectual property right eg use of images, copy
right of your dissertation
• Restrictions eg internet use, sharing, use of
encryption software
 Rights of participants directly involved
• Types of participants: ie Experiment –subjects, survey –
respondents, Case study and Ethnography –research
informants, members, participants, Action research –co-
researchers
• Right not to participate
• Right to with draw or opt out or not answer certain questions
• Right to give informed consent; this must be based on the
understanding of the following:
– Purpose of the research and benefits
– Who is undertaking the research and sponsoring organisation
– What will be involved and how long
– Any incentives eg expenses paid, report on findings shared
– How data is to be used and shared
– Instances were consent is not possible e.g. shoppers in a mall, children,
people with learning disabilities,
– Remember consent must be sought through out
 Rights continued
• Right to anonymity: use pseudonym for people
and organisation
• Right to confidentiality : eg confidential
information must be treated as such except
further consent is sought: what about
incriminating findings should one keep them
confidential
 Responsibility of an ethical
researcher
• No unnecessary intrusion; privacy issue
respected eg age, financial position
• Behave with integrity; accurate recording
and secure data
• Follow appropriate code of conduct
• No plagiarism: see section on citation
normally this can attract serious penalties
• Evaluation research ethics : use
appropriate institutional procedures as
spelled out
 Scenerio for ethical dilemma
• Experiment research often use a group that is
treated in some way (treatment group), and
control group to which no treatment is given. Say
one is making trial test of a drug that can cure a
terminal disease: Is it ethical to withhold the
treatment from the other group, the control?
• Or one is dealing with catchment conservation
where one catchment basin group is given
training and inputs on conservation agriculture
and the other basin group the control, nothing, is
this ethical?
 Conclusion

• It must be noted that ethics in research must be dealt

with under the backdrop of the legal requirement of
the country of concern.
• For instance in the USA they subscribe to the notion of
utilitarianism which is where the cost or harm to the
individual are weighed against the benefits, in Europe
use deontological which means the individual has the
right no matter the benefits and these can not be
overridden. Others that guide decision are
consequentialism, virtue ethics and feminist ethics