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Ethical Considerations: Answer: Research Ethics

Research ethics aim to protect participants and ensure research validity. Researchers must obtain informed consent, ensure voluntary and confidential participation, and do no harm. Following ethical guidelines is important for authenticity, credibility with the public, and accountability. Examples of key ethics include maintaining intellectual property rights of contributors, protecting human subjects, and gaining public support through appropriate use of funds. Planning research carefully and maintaining privacy and informed consent are also important considerations.

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212 views6 pages

Ethical Considerations: Answer: Research Ethics

Research ethics aim to protect participants and ensure research validity. Researchers must obtain informed consent, ensure voluntary and confidential participation, and do no harm. Following ethical guidelines is important for authenticity, credibility with the public, and accountability. Examples of key ethics include maintaining intellectual property rights of contributors, protecting human subjects, and gaining public support through appropriate use of funds. Planning research carefully and maintaining privacy and informed consent are also important considerations.

Uploaded by

Muhammad Aamir Farooq
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Answer to this question

Answer:
Research ethics are moral principles that guide researchers to conduct and
report research without deception or intention to harm the participants of
the study or members of the society as a whole, whether knowingly or
unknowingly. Practising ethical guidelines while conducting and reporting
research is essential to establish the validity of your research.

You must follow ethical guidelines issued by regulatory committees in order


to ensure the safety of the participants of a study, the public at large, and
that of the researcher himself/herself. Following ethical guidelines will
ensure that your research is authentic and error-free, and will allow you to
gain credibility and support from the public. You must adhere to ethical
guidelines also while presenting your findings in your manuscript. This will
ensure that your article is plagiarism-free and also no unverified data
reaches the readers of your article. Apart from that, research ethics fill in a
sense of responsibility among researchers and make it easy to fix
responsibility in case of misconduct. 

Ethical considerations
It is imperative that ethical issues are considered during the formulation of the evaluation plan. Ethical
considerations during evaluation include:
 Informed consent
 Voluntary participation
 Do no harm
 Confidentiality
 Anonymity
 Only assess relevant components.

Informed consent
Informed consent means that the person participating in the evaluation is fully informed about the evaluation
being conducted. Participants need to be made aware of the purpose of the project, who or what group is
funding it, how the findings will be used, if there are any potential adverse impacts of their participation and
who will have access to the findings. The main purpose of informed consent is that the participant is able to
make an informed decision as to whether they will participate in the evaluation or not. Additional information
should also be provided in the event that the participant becomes distressed in any way during their
participation.1,2

Voluntary participation
Voluntary participation means that people participate in the evaluation free from coercion. Participants are free
to withdraw their participation at any time without negatively impacting on their involvement in future services
or the current program2 and relationships with any of the researchers or research bodies involved. It can be
challenging to encourage high risk youth to become engaged in a program and it is therefore difficult when
participants choose not to continue in a program. It is the right of participants to leave a program of this nature
at any time, therefore no pressure should be placed on those who choose not to continue. Explanations are also
not required.

Do no harm
Harm can be both physical and/or psychological and therefore can be in the form of: stress, pain, anxiety,
diminishing self-esteem or an invasion of privacy. 2 It is imperative that the evaluation process does not in any
way harm (unintended or otherwise) participants.

Confidentiality
Confidentiality means that any identifying information is not made available to, or accessed by anyone but the
program coordinator.2 Confidentiality also ensures such identifying information is excluded from any reports or
published documents. Given that there are often small numbers in peer based programs, it is very important to
consider how reports are worded to ensure that there is no opportunity for people to be identified even though
names are not used.

Anonymity
Anonymity is a stricter form of privacy than confidentiality, as the identity of the participant remains unknown to
the research team.2 This is more difficult to achieve than confidentiality as participants in the context of social
research are usually known to the program coordinator.1

Only assess relevant components


Only assess those components that are of relevance to the program/initiative being conducted. High risk
populations are sometimes being used as guinea pigs or a captive audience to ask all sorts of questions in
evaluations that are of interest to groups conducting the program/initiative but not relevant to the program nor
will be to the group who are involved in the program. It is important to keep evaluations as simple as possible
and to remain focused on the intention of the evaluation and what the data gathered will be used for.
Ethical considerations forms a major element in a research. The researcher
needs to adhere to promote the aims of the research imparting authentic
knowledge, truth and prevention of error. Furthermore, following  ethics
enables scholars to deal collaborative approach towards their study with
the assistance of their peers, mentors and other contributors to the study.

This requires values alike accountability, trust, mutual respect and fairness
among all the parties involved in a study. This in turn depends on
protection of intellectual property rights of all the contributors, established
through implementation of ethical considerations. Other ethical
considerations in a research refers to accountability towards general public
by protecting the human or animal subjects used in the study. Similarly
appropriate usage of public funds and gaining of public support is also
important.

Examples of ethical considerations


The importance of ethical considerations in a research has been presented
with examples in the table below:

Ethics Examples
Promote authentic, original Falsifying, fabrication and misrepresentation of data which
and true knowledge by can alter a real scenario such as the degree of economic
avoiding error. development of a nation.

Maintaining intellectual property rights of fellow


To promote values of researchers, mentors and other scholars. This can be
collaborative work. achieved by bestowing proper credentials to their
contribution in the research.

Public accountability. Maintaining governmental and university policies on human


subject protection and animal care. This will guarantee the
researcher’s accountability towards public.
The researcher can gain public support for funding
his/her study (e.g. on genes or rare medicine), which
otherwise requires huge finances and time.

Maintenance of quality &


integrity along with moral and
Researchers put lives at risk when they fabricate data in
social values like, social
the study of medicine. Furthermore, if a researcher
responsibility, human rights,
discloses  information of their AIDS subjects without their
legal compliance, animal
discrete can lead to mental or physical stress. 
welfare, public health &
safety, etc.

Source: Resnik (2011); Smith (2003)

Elements of ethical considerations in


a research
Therefore, to maintain ethical considerations in a study, researcher need to
maintain the certain elements, as stated by various scholars such as:

 Kumar 2014;

 Stern & Elliott 1997;

 Bryman, A. and Bell 2011;

 Miller et al. 2012;

 Elliott & Stern 1997;

 Penslar 1995;

 Barbour 2000;

 Smith 2003;
 Knoppers & Joly 2006;

 Flewitt 2005;

 Dickert & Sugarman 2005).

Planning a research
A research should be planned to avoid misleading results and meet
acceptability while the questions regarding ethical procedure should also
be resolved. Furthermore, the researcher should ensure welfare and dignity
of the subjects.

Safeguarding collected information


Researcher should collect responses from participants related to the study.
Thus, the researcher should avoid the use of faulty equipments to ensure
accuracy. Furthermore, the researcher must follow disciplinary standards
and practices to safeguard the responses of the subjects.

Responsibility of protecting the


respondents
The researcher should take care of their subjects from any discomfort
arising due to their involvement in the research process. In addition to, the
researcher should adhere inform the subjects about any risks, benefits and
purpose of the study.
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Maintaining privacy and confidentiality


The researcher should maintain the confidentiality of the responses of the
subjects involved in the study. Furthermore the researcher must ensure
privacy of the participants. Researcher should maintain a trustworthy
relationship with the respondents, so that their responses will not be
divulged to others. The researcher can also use codes in order to record the
data to encrypt personal information.

Following guidelines and avoid


plagiarism
It is crucial for the researcher to follow guidelines laid down by the
authority before initiating a study. If the researcher finds the data to be
erroneous then it is the responsibility of the researcher to correct the data.

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