Ethics in quantitative research
Guidelines for research l and health e and social sciences, law and the ch ethics the numerous rules and principles of quantitative research methodology provide any guarantee of credibility with regard to ethics? Competence in research ethics must include insight into academic issues as well as research methods. Researchers enjoy a large degree of freedom and academic responsibility, and this calls for satisfactory capability and respect for the requirements that need to be imposed in order to be able to undertake scientifically credible research. Those who have been entrusted with research are under a basic obligation to act with academic, methodological and ethical tion of l and ethical tative methods include formalized principles that form the basis for a stringent research process that proceeds from formulation of research questions, research design and the selection and analysis of data to interpretations and conclusions. Though quantitative methods are characterised by stringent requirements for structure, the methods also provide room for flexibility and pragmatic adaptation. Combined designs using "mixed methods" that include qualitative as well as quantitative data are therefore increasingly used (cresswell 2014:215–240). This may imply that a qualitative study is included as a pilot study, or that qualitative data are used as the basis for a subsequent quantitative analysis. While surveys are able to provide a general overview of the matter at hand, qualitative data have the potential to provide more detailed insight into the opinions and experiences of the is an essential requirement for researchers to have fundamental ethical attitudes that permit them to conduct all stages of the research process in an honest and credible ionally, the search for truth has been the fundamental objective and legitimisation of science. According to the "galilean imperative" (from galileo galilei's formulation from around 1600), research shall investigate everything, reveal all mysteries, penetrate the unknown and provide objective explanations of all phenomena. Research shall not be governed by prevailing opinion, but search for true knowledge with no concern for other r key value, which is closely related to the first, emphasises the need for academic freedom. The value of freedom, which has enjoyed a strong position, has been based on trust in the impartiality of research in contentious issues of a political, moral and religious nature. One key premise was that research could only be valuable when the researchers and their institutions remained neutral with regard to values and were unfettered in their social position. This perspective has changed in later times, since it is taken for granted that various values, issues and factors, such as formal arrangements and financial priorities, will influence the research that is undertaken.
The question is therefore what kinds of values and socially normative factors in reality serve to govern research, and what values help justify and legitimise academic value concerns reliability and credibility, focusing on the quality of the research methods that are applied and the researchers' ethical standards. Value that is of more recent origin states that research must be accessible for scrutiny and published, which is related to the need for control and possible unintended chers are never exempted from exercising sound ethical judgement, they need to be methodologically qualified for conducting research with validity and quality, and they must do their utmost to ensure that objective concerns take precedence over preconceived notions and honest means being fair and credible – being trustworthy. Plagiarism can include duplicating, copying or many other subtle forms of using the theories, interpretations, designs or results of others without reference to the ional falsifications give rise to fundamental problems of research ethics. In other words, this is scientific dishonesty in ding results may thus emerge when certain conclusions are of greater interest to the researcher than the scientific evidence that follows from an objective scientific investigation. This is the background for the questions raised about commercially based research and certain forms of commissioned research. When a piece of research work is used to corroborate certain arguments put forward by a commissioning agency, there is a risk of crossing the line that separates research from legitimising and manipulatory nded errors may be a direct consequence of inadequate competence in research methodology. In order to maintain the high-quality work that research implies, it is thus a key precondition that the researchers are competent to use relevant and acceptable research tion of initiatives have been taken to prevent unworthy conditions in the form of scientific misconduct, academic dishonesty etc. And a number of measures have been enacted to strengthen research ethics as a pillar of scientific practice. In psychology and educational science, the american psychological association (apa) has played a key role through its ethics code, which since the early 1980s has been published in increasingly complete versions. These ethical norms include issues such as requirements for honesty, requirements for informed consent, anonymisation and storage of data, the right of access to data for participants and duty of confidentiality for all those who undertake tion of the integrity of research participants and informants is a particularly important ethical norm in research, including in special-needs education studies. This norm focuses on protection against various forms of risk involved in participation in research and the protection of the identity of participants, including concerns for preventing stigmatisation of particular populations or groups. In any event, publication of such forms of research involves an ethical tion of anonymity and thus privacy is a key issue in protecting integrity. This may involve the need for methodologically valid replications and testing of research findings, and there may be a need for linking data from various sources.
The latter may include, for example, questionnaire data from students that the researcher wishes to link to the teachers' assessments of the same has also been shown that the use of electronic methods as well as telephone interviews often gives rise to scepticism regarding real preservation of anonymity. Addition, it will generally be more difficult to protect the anonymity of informants in qualitative studies than when collective, quantitative methods are used (such as various forms of questionnaire-based methods). When designs for collective questioning are used, however, individual characteristics will be less identifiable, and individuals who have completed a questionnaire will not be directly l and ethical is often assumed that the standardized methods and formalised requirements for quantitative research help ensure academic and ethical credibility. Even though there will be fewer subjective elements of error here than in qualitative research, there will be ample opportunities for dishonesty to render the research misleading even when quantitative methods are applied. At worst, researchers may manipulate the data, use fictitious and fabricated data or discard any unwanted results. When research is undertaken in solitude and the researcher is alone in having insight into what is being done, the road to dishonesty lies us examples of research fraud can be found, in both an historical and contemporary context. These examples include academics who were held to be researchers of high stature, but in reality were untrustworthy. By fabricating and manipulating research data in his studies of twins, he could "confirm" his theory of heritability of intelligence. The essence of burt's reprehensible acts consisted in the fact that many of the twins in his material did not exist, nor did many of the researchers with whom burt had "collaborated". This scandal draws attention to the fact that the research community has traditionally been closed and disinclined towards openness, including with regard to potential risk factors, and thus underscores the need for a clear focus on values as well as for increased transparency and light of what we know about dishonesty, two self-evident countermeasures are commonly identified: first, to strengthen the monitoring, and second, to raise the ethical standard. Those who have funded research are often content to receive some research reports, and unannounced observations of the research process are rarely undertaken. However, monitoring may be of limited value and may also entail unintended negative consequences, since the desired creativity presupposes freedom as well as tating an expanded ethical competence in researchers and research communities is therefore a key concern. This includes ethical awareness and follow-up on the part of agencies that provide research funding.
This is also a matter of ethics in a wider context, in the need to focus on power relationships and processes that maintain hegemony, whereby particularly subjects in the fields of care and learning are systematically discriminated against when resources are allocated. This topic has attracted little attention in this country so far, and it is also beyond the limits of this , we have focused on how research competence includes ethical, professional and methodological credibility. For example, when educational researchers possess limited insight into learning and the learning processes in children, they will have very limited qualifications for undertaking adequate empirical research. This is a hidden ethical problem in may also apply to the implementation of quantitative studies, often involving large amounts of data, which require methodological competence to conduct analyses in a stringent and academically acceptable manner. Largely overlooked ethical problem is associated with the issue of choice of design in research that includes, for example, children in a difficult life situation, disabled people or others who are in need. Those who have a hard life are often burdened by many crushed hopes, and participation in a control group may thus be problematical in terms of ethics. Is a matter of being ethically considerate and maintaining good research practice, which can uphold research quality as well as concern for those people whom this research is intended to r problem of research ethics is associated with publication without sufficient quality assurance and without replication. One especially unworthy and problematic aspect of this are media reports that trumpet dramatic conclusions, when no research report is available. Such media reports often cause a stir, and not infrequently they spark a debate that has no research base and is often misinformed. This practice serves to undermine the trust in research, and can thus be detrimental to research that rests on a solid academic and ethical article has been translated from norwegian by erik hansen, akasie språktjenester an psychological assosiatation: ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (from 1982 to 2014). Lincoln: sage national committee for research ethics in the social sciences and the humanities (nesh) (2006): guidelines for research ethics in the social sciences, law and the humanities. Oslo: det norske national committee for research ethics in the social sciences and the humanities (nesh) (2006): guidelines for research ethics in the social sciences, law and the humanities. Oslo: the norwegian national research ethics research ethics research ethics library offers more than 80 specialised articles on topics linked to research ethics, written by a large number of different experts and professionals.
Taken as a whole, the articles shall serve as an introduction to key topics in the area of research ethics. Each article contains additional links to further purpose is to help engender reflection and debate, rather than to create an encyclopaedia or provide universally applicable perspectives and viewpoints presented in the fbib articles do not necessarily reflect those of the norwegian national research ethics committees; all authors are responsible for their own ibe to our english you find what you were looking for? You for helping us provide a better in your feedback in the form l of business ethicsjune 2017, volume 143, issue 1,Pp 1–16 | cite asis quantitative research ethical? Pieridesoriginal paperfirst online: 28 april 2017received: 14 february 2017accepted: 17 april ctthis editorial offers new ways to ethically practice, evaluate, and use quantitative research (qr). Studies, including their methods and results, are relationally valid when they ethically connect researchers’ purposes with the way that qr is oriented and the ways that it is done—including the concepts and units of analysis invoked, as well as what its ‘methods’ imply more generally. This new way of doing qr can provide the liberty required to address serious worldly problems on terms that are both practical and ethically informed in relation to the problems themselves rather than the confines of existing qr logics and dsquantitative research quantitative methods statistics probability regression research design data analysis inductive inference referencesabrahamson, e. Toward a new vision for management research: a commentary on “organizational researcher values, ethical responsibility, and the committed-to-participant research perspective”. The connection between varying treatment effects and the crisis of unreplicable research a bayesian perspective. Reflexivity in organization and management theory: a study of the production of the research “subject”. The effectiveness of business codes: a critical examination of existing studies and the development of an integrated research model. Multilevel latent polynomial regression for modeling (in) congruence across organizational groups: the case of organizational culture research. Organizational research methods,19(1), 53–efgoogle scholarcopyright information© springer science+business media dordrecht 2017authors and affiliationsmichael j. Ment of management and marketinguniversity of ce manchester business schooluniversity of this article as:Reprints and alised in to check ted access to the full e local sales tax if l of business the whole of about institutional use cookies to improve your experience with our tative tative tation ch questions & ts, constructs & ch strategy and research ch ethics is not a one size fits all approach.
The research strategy that you choose to guide your dissertation determines the approach that you should take towards research ethics. Even though all dissertation research at the undergraduate and master's level should adhere to the basic ethical principles of doing good (i. Malfeasance), this does not mean that the approach you take towards research ethics will be the same as other students. Rather, the approach to research ethics that you adopt in your dissertation should be consistent with your chosen research strategy. Since your research strategy consists of a number of components, the approach you adopt should reflect each of these our research strategy section, we introduce these major components, which include research paradigms, research designs, research methods, sampling strategies and data analysis techniques. Whilst all of these components can have ethical implications for your dissertation, we focus on research designs, a couple of research methods, sampling strategies, and data analysis techniques to illustrate some of the factors you will need to think about when designing and conducting your dissertation, as well as writing up the research ethics section of your research strategy chapter (typically chapter three: research strategy). The impact of each of these components of research strategy on research ethics is discussed in turn:Research designs and research ch methods and research ng strategies and research analysis techniques and research ch designs and research type of research design that you can use to guide your dissertation has unique ethical challenges. These types of research design include quantitative research designs, qualitative research designs and mixed methods research designs. The impact of each of these types of research design on research ethics is discussed in turn:Quantitative research ed with qualitative research designs, the more structured and well-defined characteristics of quantitative research designs allow researchers to plan much of the research process before it starts. Even during the research process, there tends to be relatively little drift from these plans. From an ethical perspective, this makes it easier to: (a) understand what ethical challenges you may face; (b) plan how to overcome these ethical challenges; and (c) write a more robust ethics proposal and/or ethics consent is the case whether your dissertation involves experimental or non-experimental research. In the case of non-experimental research, this can often mean that instead of having to submit an ethics proposal to an ethics committee, you may only have to convince your supervisor that you have addressed any potential ethical challenges you expect to face. However, if you are conducting experimental research, especially involving human subjects, there is a greater likelihood that you will need to submit an ethics proposal to an ethics committee, which can slow down the research process.
Despite this, the pre-planned and procedural nature of quantitative research designs does make it easier to understand what ethical challenges you may face, which avoids potential ethical issues arising during the research process that may affect the way you can analyse and present your ative research ative research designs tend to be more evolutionary in nature when compared with quantitative research designs. For example, data collected during the research process can influence the choice of research methods in subsequent phases of a qualitative research design. As a result, it is often only during the research process that potential ethical issues that may be faced in the next phase of a research project become clear. This can make it harder to: (a) understand what ethical challenges you may face; (b) plan how to overcome these ethical challenges; and (c) write an ethics proposal and/or ethics consent form that are considered robust; at least at the outset of the dissertation your research involves (a) controversial practices (e. Children, marginalised people), where ethics approval may be more challenging, the addition of a qualitative research design, with its uncertainty, may make achieving approval more difficult. However, ethics committees are increasingly recognising the evolutionary nature of qualitative research designs and the potential ethical uncertainties they sometimes create. For the most part, you should be able to recognise most of the potential ethical scenarios you may face during the research process and propose in advance how you would overcome methods research you are using a mixed methods research design, you will need to take into account the ethical challenges inherent in quantitative and qualitative research designs. To some extent, this may put a greater burden on your dissertation, slowing down the research process, especially if you need to conduct a qualitative research phase (e. Quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research designs all present ethical challenges, most are easily overcome. Even when using mixed methods research designs, you should be able to recognise different ethical scenarios; that is, different ethical issues you would face if using one research method before another, or one research method in conjunction with another. Recognising the basic ethical principles that dissertations should adhere to is a good starting point [see the article: principles of research ethics]. Methods and research potential ethical issues raised by different research methods not only differ from one type of research method to the next (e. Surveys versus in-depth interviews), but also the way in which a research method is used (e.
To illustrate some of the different ethical issues you will face across research methods, we discuss surveys and structured interviews, observation and informal and in-depth interviews. Each of these research methods is discussed in turn:Surveys and structured their very nature, surveys and structured interviews have to be designed before the research process starts. In fact, since these two types of research method typically use closed questions where respondents must choose from pre-defined options, most of the potential answers to questions are known in an ethical perspective, this makes it easier to get informed consent from respondents because most aspects of the survey and structured interview process are fairly certain. Before you start the survey or structured interview process, you can clearly explain what you will be asking potential respondents, and even show them the entire research instrument (i. This can not only help you achieve informed consent, but also ease the mind of the research participant, minimising the potential for distress, which is an important basic principle of research ethics [see the article: principles of research ethics]. Covert observation, where participants are unaware that you are conducting research, raises particular ethical issues. Let's look at overt and covert observation in turn:Most research that uses observation as a research method will be overt in nature; that this, the research participants will be aware that you are observing them and should know what you are observing. In some instances, access to research participants in an observational setting such as an organisation may have been granted by a gatekeeper; an individual that has the right to grant access (e. In such instances, permission may have been granted to carry out your research and participants may be aware what you are doing, but they have not necessarily given you their informed consent. As such, participants may not have been given the right to withdraw from your research, which is one of the basic principles of research ethics [see the article: principles of research ethics]. Even if an individual has been granted the right to withdraw from your research, you will need to think about how can manage this if you are observing a large group interaction (e. Not only are respondents not giving you informed consent, but you may also be keeping the observation covert because you feel that respondents would be otherwise unwilling to take part in your research. Whilst such covert research and deceptive practices, especially where used intentionally, can be viewed as controversial, it can be argued that they have a place in mes it is simply impossible to get informed consent from each participant, especially if you are accessing a group through a gatekeeper or are observing people on the move.
Confidentiality, which is a basic principle of research ethics [see the article: principles of research ethics]. You will need to provide strong justifications why covert observation is necessary for the success of your dissertation, and why other, less deceptive research methods could not have been used al and in-depth ed with structured interviews (and surveys), there is potentially greater uncertainty for research participants when taking part in informal and in-depth interviews. Whilst it is possible to know some of the initial questions you may ask research participants at the outset of the interview, the majority of questions asked are likely to arise during the interview process as you learn more about the phenomena you are interested in. This evolutionary characteristic of informal and in-depth interviews makes it more difficult to let potential research participants know what to expect from the interview process. Nonetheless, it should still be possible to get informed consent provided you: (a) let potential research participants know what the research is about; (b) explain how the interview process will develop; that is, that you will ask new questions based on the responses you get from the research participant and as you knowledge of the phenomena you are interested in develops; and (c) reassure potential research participants that they have the right to withdraw at any time from the interview the case of in-depth interviews, in particular, greater disclosure and self-expression often take place during the interview process. Since in-depth interviews tend to be more personal in nature, you need to be able to address any ethical concerns that research participants may have. For example, greater disclosure may require: (a) a stricter adherence to data protection and participant confidentiality; (b) greater transparency by you, the researcher, when it comes to letting the research participant know how you have interpreted what they have said; and (c) specific permissions from participants to report quotations and other personally identifiable information and/or ective of the research method that you use, you will need to think about what data you will be recording, how that data is to be stored, and whether research participants know how their data will be used.