3.4: Ethics of Research

Ethics are standards of what is right and wrong. They are a general agreement shared by researchers as to what is proper and improper in scientific research. Our culture and sociology have ethical standards that may be different from other disciplines or other cultures. Standards may arise from religious, political, or pragmatic sources. Standards differ over time, for example long ago we didn't have formal considerations about how to treat people who participate in scientific studies.

There are four major ethical issues that protect research subjects: 1.) Voluntary participation means that subjects must participate voluntarily, they must understand the risks of participating, and they must be able to withdraw from the study at any time. 2.) Researchers can do no harm to participants. This includes anything from killing someone to causing them undue stress. 3.) Every study must be confidential which means that the researcher can never divulge the participants' identities. Some studies are anonymous which means the researcher does not know the participants' identities. 4.) Deception cannot be used to get people to participate in research they would not want to participate in.

To be sure subjects know what they are getting into when they agree to participate in a study they sign an informed consent form which tells them the general purpose of the study, explains their right to withdraw, explains the confidentiality of the study, tells whether it is anonymous, explains the potential risks, and describes how to contact the researcher.

You can probably think of times when it would be necessary to deceive a subject or when you might need to cause just a little stress to investigate something. Of course there are exceptions, but we'll leave that to your research methods class.

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