ETHICAL ISSUES IN SOCIAL RESEARCH

Voluntary Participation
No Harm to the Participants
Anonymity and Confidentiality
Deception
Analysis and Reporting
Institutional Review Boards
Professional Codes of Ethics
 

To begin, participation in research must be voluntary.  While your university or your bank may require you to fill out certain forms in order to get what you want from them, you cannot ethically be required to participate in research projects.

Social research should be designed so as to cause no harm to those who are studied.

Social research often asks people to reveal information about themselves that they might not like publically known, and social researchers are bound to keep such information at least confidential.  Where possible, data collection is designed in such a way that the responses are anonymous, even to the researcher.

None of the rules above, while fundamental, are absolute, and we will examine some of the ambiguities that complicate the design of truly ethical research, rather than allowing the blind application of established procedures.  There is, similarly, a gray area with regard to deception.  While researchers should be honest with the subjects of their research, we will see that this is often impossible, requiring the researcher to determine whether the necessary deceptions are really justified.

There are also ethical issues involved in the analysis of data and the reporting of results--concerning the reporting of methodological shortcomings, for example.

Institutional Review Boards at universities and other research institutions are designed to protect the well-being of human subjects.  As we shall see, however, some suggest that IRBs often go too far.

Finally, we'll see that professional associations have codes of ethics which seek to insure ethical research by their members.