Principles of research
Tative tation ch questions & ts, constructs & ples of research are a number of ethical principles that should be taken into account when performing undergraduate and master's level dissertation research. At the core, these ethical principles stress the need to (a) do good (known as beneficence) and (b) do no harm (known as non-malfeasance). In practice, these ethical principles mean that as a researcher, you need to: (a) obtain informed consent from potential research participants; (b) minimise the risk of harm to participants; (c) protect their anonymity and confidentiality; (d) avoid using deceptive practices; and (e) give participants the right to withdraw from your research. This article discusses these five ethical principles and their practical implications when carrying out dissertation you look at these five basic ethical principles, it may appear obvious that your dissertation should include these. However, there are many instances where it is not possible or desirable to obtain informed consent from research participants. More often than not, such choices should reflect the research strategy that you adopt to guide your y speaking, your dissertation research should not only aim to do good (i. Whilst ethical requirements in research can vary across countries, these are the basic principles of research ethics. This is important not only for ethical reasons, but also practical ones, since a failure to meet such basic principles may lead to your research being (a) criticised, potentially leading to a lower mark, and/or (b) rejected by your supervisor or ethics committee, costing you valuable time. In the sections that follow, we discuss the five of the main practical ethical principles that stem from these basic principles. Each of these basic principles of research ethics is discussed in turn:Principle one: minimising the risk of ple two: obtaining informed ple three: protecting anonymity and ple four: avoiding deceptive ple five: providing the right to sing the risk of tation research should not harm participants. Privacy and lly, it is not harm that we need to think about since a researcher does not intentionally go out to cause harm. In order to minimising the risk of harm you should think about:Obtaining informed consent from ting the anonymity and confidentiality of ng deceptive practices when designing your ing participants with the right to withdraw from your research at any discuss each of these ethical principles in the sections that follow, explaining (a) what they mean and (b) instances where they should (and should not) be ing informed of the foundations of research ethics is the idea of informed consent. Simply put, informed consent means that participants should understand that (a) they are taking part in research and (b) what the research requires of them. Such information may include the purpose of the research, the methods being used, the possible outcomes of the research, as well as associated demands, discomforts, inconveniences and risks that the participants may face. We discuss these in more detail under the section: avoiding deceptive ting anonymity and ting the anonymity and confidentiality of research participants is another practical component of research ethics. After all, participants will typically only be willing to volunteer information, especially information of a private or sensitive nature, if the researcher agrees to hold such information in confidence. Whilst it is possible that research participants may be hurt in some way if the data collection methods used are somehow insensitive, there is perhaps a greater danger that harm can be caused once data has been collected.
However, this does not mean that all data collected from research participants needs to be kept confidential or anonymous. It may be possible to disclose the identity and views of individuals at various stages of the research process (from data collection through to publication of your dissertation). However, such a stripping of identifiable information may not always be possible to anticipate at the outset of your dissertation when thinking about issues of research ethics. This is not only a consideration for dissertations following a qualitative research design, but also a quantitative research design [for more information, see the article: research strategy and research ethics]. That your dissertation used a quantitative research design and a survey as your main research method. If the work is later published, adjustments would then need to be made to protect the confidentiality of are also a wide range of potential legal protections that may affect what research you can and cannot perform, how you must treated the data of research participants, and so forth. After all, how can participants know (a) that they are taking part in research and (b) what the research requires of them if they are being deceived? For this reason, in most circumstances, dissertation research should avoid any kinds of deceptive practices. However, this is not always the ion is sometimes a necessary component of covert research, which can be justified in some cases. Covert research reflects research where (a) the identity of the observer and/or (b) the purpose of the research is not known to participants. Cases where you may choose to engage in covert research may include instances where:It is not feasible to let everyone in a particular research setting know what you are observation or knowledge of the purpose of the research may alter the particular phenomenon that is being 's take each of these in turn:It is not feasible to let everyone in a particular research setting know what you are feasibility, we are not talking about the cost of doing research. Instead, we mean that it is not practically possible to let everyone in a particular research setting know what you are doing. This is most likely to be the case where research involves observation, rather than direct contact with participants, especially in a public or online setting. You may not be intentionally trying to engage in deceptive practices, but clearly participants are not giving you their informed observation or knowledge of the purpose of the research may alter the particular phenomenon that is being observations or a participants? Knowledge of the true purpose of the research have the potential to alter the particular phenomenon that you are interested in, this is a major concern in terms of the quality of your ore, when you think about whether to engage in covert research and possibly deceptive practices, you should think about the extent to which this could be beneficial in your dissertation, not research in general; that is, everything from the research paradigm that guides your dissertation through to the data analysis techniques you choose affect issues of research ethics in your dissertation [see the article: research strategy and research ethics]. Some of the following scenarios where covert research may be considered justifiable:You are conducting a piece of research looking at prejudice. Furthermore, participants are not told that the research is about prejudice because it is felt that this could alter their responses.
You feel that observation would be an appropriate research method in such a naturalistic setting. Therefore, you may have received permission to go undercover or provide a story to explain why you are there, which is not the 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 ing the right to the exception of those instances of covert observation where is not feasible to let everyone that is being observed know what you are doing, research participants should always have the right to withdraw from the research process. Furthermore, participants should have the right to withdraw at any stage in the research process. When a participant chooses to withdraw from the research process, they should not be pressured or coerced in any way to try and stop them from your supervisor and/or ethics committee expect you to complete an ethics consent form, it is likely that you will have to let participants know that they have the right to withdraw at any time [see the article: ethics consent form]. That you have read these basic principles of research ethics, you may want to understand how the research strategy you have chosen affects your approach to research ethics [see the article: research strategy and research ethics]. You will need to understand the impact of your research strategy on your approach to research ethics when writing up the research ethics section of your research strategy chapter (usually chapter three: research strategy). Respect for principle incorporates two elements that deal with respecting people in regard to research:People should be treated as term autonomous means that a person can make his or her own decisions about what to do and what to agree chers must respect that individuals should make their own informed decisions about whether to participate in research. In such cases, these people should be protected and only be included in research under specific circumstances, since they cannot make a true informed decision on their definition of beneficence is action that is done for the benefit of others. This principle states that research should:The purpose of health research is to discover new information that would be helpful to society. The purpose of research should never be to hurt anyone or find out information at the expense of other ze benefits for participants and minimize risks for purpose of much research involving humans is to show whether a drug is safe and effective. Researchers are obligated to do their best to minimize those possible risks and to maximize the benefits for principle deals with the concept of fairness. Researchers designing trials should consider what is fair in terms of recruitment of participants and choice of location to conduct a trial. This encompasses issues related to who benefits from research and who bears the risks of research. It provides the framework for thinking about these decisions in ways that are fair and who are included in research should not be included merely because they are a population that is easy to access, available, or perhaps vulnerable and less able to decline experimental strategy that is likely to be used by many types of people should be tested in the very populations of people who are likely to use it, to ensure that it is safe, effective, and acceptable for all of the potential users. Essay is intended as a letter to both myself and others, to hold up in the sharpest possible terms an ideal of research i believe is worth working toward. I’m a theoretical physicist; i lead a small research group at a large australian university; i have a permanent position, with no teaching duties for the next few years; i have several colleagues on the faculty with closely related philosophy underlying the essay is based on a famous quote attributed to aristotle: “we are what we repeatedly do. I’m writing this essay to develop an improved personal model of how to be an effective researcher, a model that can be used as the basis for concrete actions leading to the development of new ental fundamental principles of effective research are extremely similar to those for effectiveness in any other part of life.
Although the principles are common sense, that doesn’t mean they’re common practice, nor does it mean that they’re easy to internalize. Personally, i find it a constant battle to act in accord with these principles, a battle requiring ongoing reflection, rediscovery and renewed ating research into the rest of your ch is, of course, only a part of life, and must be understood in relation to the rest of life. If research is not incredibly exciting, rewarding and enjoyable, at least some of the time, then why not do something else that is? For the purposes of this essay, i’ll assume that you already have a strong desire to do research [*]. You also need to have the rest of your life in order to be an effective researcher. If you don’t get them right, not only will your life as a whole be less good, your research will suffer. So get these things right, and make sure they’re integrated with your research an example, i once spent three years co-authoring a technical book, and for the final eighteen months i concentrated on the book almost exclusively, to the neglect of my health, relationships, and other research. Believe that the foundation of effective research is to internalize a strong vision of what you want to achieve, to work proactively towards that vision, taking personal responsibility for successes and failures. You need to develop disciplined work habits, and to achieve balance between self-development and the actual creative research ivity and personal ive people are proactive and take personal responsibility for the events in their lives. The heart of personal effectiveness is not necessarily any special knowledge or secret: it is doing the basics consistently it comes to proactivity and responsibility, it seems to be incredibly difficult to internalize these principles and act on them consistently. These costs and benefits are easy to forget, unless you’re constantly being reminded that complaints, self-doubt, blame of others and of self are actually the easy short-term way out, and that chances are that you can construct a better life for yourself, at the cost of needing to do some hard work over the short the context of research, this means constantly reminding yourself that you are the person ultimately responsible for your research effectiveness. All these things influence your research career, and may be either a help or a hindrance (more on that later), but in the final analysis if things are not working well it is up to you to take charge ive people have a vision of what they’d like to achieve. A good vision answers questions like: what sort of researcher would i like to become? I believe this is particularly important in the more abstract parts of research (like theoretical physics), where it can require some work to make a personal, emotional connection to one’s own research. When a researcher stays out late, sleeps in, and gets a late start, no-one minds; when a professional athlete does, they’re likely to receive a blast from their to a social environment which encourages and supports the development of research skills and research excellence can make an enormous difference to all aspect of one’s research, including self-discipline. A colleague once told me of a friend of his who for some time used a stopwatch to keep track of how much research work he did each week. He was shocked to discover that after factoring in all the other activities he engaged in each day – interruptions, email, surfing the net, the phone, fruitless meetings, chatting with friends, and so on – he was averaging only half an hour of research per day.
The good news, of course, is that building this kind of awareness lays the foundation for personal change, for achieving congruence between our behavioural goals and how we actually behave, in short, for achieving s of research: self-development and the creative ch involves two main aspects, self-development and the creative process of research. We’ll discuss the specifics of each aspect below, but for now i want to concentrate on the problem of achieving balance between the two, for i believe it is a common and significant mistake to concentrate too much on one aspect to the exclusion of the who concentrate mostly on self-development usually make early exits from their research careers. Although this is an important problem, in this essay i will focus mostly on the converse problem, the problem of focusing too much on creative research, to the exclusion of are a lot of incentives for people to concentrate on creative research to the exclusion of self-development. Throughout one’s research career, but particularly early on, there are many advantages to publishing lots of papers. Within limits, this is a good thing, especially for young researchers: it brings you into the community of researchers; it gives you the opportunity to learn how to write well, and give good presentations; it can help keep you motivated. I believe all researchers should publish at least a few papers each year, essentially as an obligation to the research and wider community; they should make some contribution, even if only a small one, on a relatively unimportant r, some people end up obsessed with writing as many papers as possible, as quickly as possible. To achieve one’s full potential requires a balancing act: making a significant and regular enough research contribution to enable oneself to get and keep good jobs, while continuing to develop one’s talents, constantly renewing and replenishing oneself. In particular, once one has achieved a certain amount of job security (a long-term or permanent job) it may make sense to shift the balance so that self-development takes on a larger many people (myself included) who have concentrated mainly on making creative research contributions earlier in their careers, this can be a difficult adjustment to make, as it requires changing one’s sense of what is important. Furthermore, there is a constant pull towards concentrating on research over self-development, since there are often short-term incentives to sacrifice self-development for research (“i’ve got to get this paper out now”), but rarely vice versa. To balance these tendencies, we need to remember that nobody, no matter how talented, is born an effective researcher; that distinction can only be obtained after a considerable amount of hard work and personal change, and there is no reason to suppose that just because one is now able to publish lots of papers that one has peaked as a my opinion, creative research is best viewed as an extension of self-development, especially an extension of a well-developed reading program. I’m now going to talk in a little more detail about both processes, keeping in mind that the ultimate goal of research is new ideas, insights, tools and technologies, and this goal must inform the process of ping research foundation is a plan for the development of research strengths. The plan needs to be driven by your research goals, but should balance short-term and long-term considerations. Some time should be spent on things that appear very likely to lead to short-term research payoff. Do what you can do better than anybody; to mangle a quote from lincoln, nobody can be better than everybody all of the time, but anybody can be better than everybody some of the my opinion the reason most people fail to do great research is that they are not willing to pay the price in self-development. My experience is that virtually none of the researchers in either field will systematically learn the other field in any sort of depth. The few who do put in this effort often achieve spectacular y, a note on how to go about developing some new research strength. A mistake i’m prone to make, and i know some others are as well, is to feel as though some degree of completeness is required in understanding a research field.
In fact, in any given research field there are usually only a tiny number of papers that are really worth reading. You are almost certainly better off reading deeply in the ten most important papers of a research field than you are skimming the top five ideas carry over to the problem of staying current in your fields of interest: i believe that you can stay quite current by (a) quickly skimming a great deal of work, to keep track of what is known, and what sort of problems people are thinking about, and (b) based on that skimming, picking a dozen or so papers each year to read deeply, in the belief that they contain the most important research results of the year. But you certainly should do some such deep p a high-quality research is a considerable amount of research showing that people consistently underestimate the effect of the environment on personal effectiveness. This is particularly important in an academic environment where there are usually many short-term social pressures that are not directly related to research effectiveness – teaching, writing letters of recommendation and referee reports, committee work, academic politics. By contrast, in most institutions there are few short-term social pressures to do great research of the highest-leverage work you can do involves improving your environment so that social pressures work for you as a researcher, rather than against you. They’re not really disjoint or exclusive styles of working, but rather idealizations which are useful ways of thinking about how people go about creative problem-solver: this is the person who works intensively on well-posed technical problems, often problems known (and sometimes well-known) to the entire research community in which they work. Problem-creators may often write papers that are technically rather simple, but ask an interesting new question, or pose an old problem in a new way, or demonstrate a simple but fruitful connection that no-one previously realized course, the problem-solver and the problem-creator are idealizations; all researchers exemplify both styles, to some extent. Both styles of research can be extremely m-solvers have numerous social advantages in research, and for that reason i believe they tend to be more common. One reason i’m discussing these two working styles at some length is to dispel the common idea that creative research is necessarily primarily about problem-solving. He advised young people in the audience not to work towards a nobel prize, but instead to aim their research in directions that they personally find fun and interesting. I thought his advice quite sound in some regards: for some people it is extremely tempting to regard external recognition as the be-all and end-all of research success, and the nobel prize is perhaps the highest form of external recognition in physics. I think better advice from dresden would have been to aim to produce work of the highest possible caliber, but according to what you have come to believe is ing for problems: obviously, all researchers do some of this. One of the big ways you can get ahead as a researcher is by identifying and then solving problems that are important, but perhaps not terribly difficult, ahead of everyone fy the messes: in a nice article about how he does research, physicist steven weinberg emphasized the importance of identifying the messes. But i will make a few general remarks that i find y, goals, and forward momentum: in my opinion, there is little that is more important in research than building forward momentum. Much of the time in research is spent in a fog, and taking the time to set clear goals can really help lift the multiple formulations: one of the most common mistakes made by researchers is to hold on very closely to a particular problem formulation. Many people’s basic research model is to identify a problem they find interesting, and then spend a lot of time working on just that problem. This can be a difficult treadmill to get belief is that the way to start out in a research career is by working primarily on small and relatively tractable problems, where you have a good chance of success.
The reason is that tackling smaller problems ensures that you make a reasonable contribution to science, and that you continue to take an active part in the research community. If he had not, he would have lost contact with an entire research community, and losing such contact would likely have made a significant negative difference to his work on fermat’s last 3: the intimidation factor. By making the research process part of a larger endeavour, he ensured that the process was a success no matter how it came out, even if he failed to solve the problem, or was scooped by someone else. This facie ridiculous, but i have seen people burn out by following exactly this case of the more experienced researcher is more difficult. In particular, by attacking only the most important and most difficult problems an experienced researcher (a) takes themselves out of circulation, (b) stops making ongoing contributions, (c) loses the habit of success, and (d) risks losing morale, which is so important to research success. I’ve never read epictetus, but i’m quite a fan of marcus aurelius’ “meditations”, so perhaps that’s the influence you’re an academic, i actually did quite a bit of agonizing over whether or not to cite my sources, and ended up deciding not to in the main, viewing this more like a magazine article or opinion piece than a piece of research. I find often scientists assume research skills don’t translate into business, but critical thinking and the ability to properly dissect a problem into manageable chunks is a rare and valuable boerckel an enjoyable and useful look at the process of research. I find these very accurate descriptions in my own field, english, (more specifically rhetoric and composition) and in my own ideal of how i want to pursue research – the big questions of language and writing research (what is persuasive language? Alternate with “smaller,” practical issues of research (what is an effective way to teach this essay, format a bibliography, etc. L nielsen and susan: thankyou to you both for the kind categories of researcher: i find it remarkable and surprising to hear that this kind of divide holds also in english. Believe most people obtain phds but are not taught *how* to do research – which is what you discuss; they only solve *some* problem and by osmosis are to pick up the *how*. Most pick this up from many post-docs and jobs if they are lucky enough to work with good researchers, a horribly inefficient may be interested in looking at what has been written about john wheeler’s approach to working with his graduate students (i read a summary somewhere, which i now misplaced). I doubt it was brownian motion in research: even in academia, i find i sometimes end up feeling the same kind of pressures you mention. To this ibe to this blog by l's blog on data-driven michael on places on the ous research links for book ous research links for last nting discovery: the new era of networked m computation and quantum terloo video about open m computing for the there a tension between creativity and accuracy? Titan theme by the theme iassa secretariat is hosted by arctic research centre at umeå university (arcum). Photo: mattias ariatcouncil membersformer councilsobjectiveshistorybylawsresearch principlespartnersiassa logo/ adopted by the iassa general assembly convened in copenhagen may 23, 1998, during the third international congress of arctic social sciences (icass iii). Statement of principles has been formulated in accordance with the bylaws of the international arctic social sciences association (iassa) adopted by the iassa general assembly on 29 october 1992.
These principles have been formulated to provide guidelines for all researchers working in the north in the social, natural and health sciences, and in the humanities. These principles are intended to promote mutual respect, communication and partnerships between researchers and northern residents. Social science research, particularly studies of human subjects, requires special consideration, as do studies of land and resources that have economic, cultural, social and spiritual value to native people. The researcher should consult with the appropriate regional and/or local authorities regarding planned research within their territories. Informed consent should be obtained from appropriate authorities and from any individuals involved in the research. In seeking informed consent, the researchers should identify all sponsors and sources of support; the person in charge and all investigators involved in the research; the purposes, goals, and time frame of the research; data gathering techniques (including audio and video recording, photographs, etc. The researcher should consult with and, where applicable, include local people in project planning and implemen-tation. Realistic opportunities should be provided for them to express their interests and to participate in the research. Research results should be presented to local communities in non-technical terms and where possible translated into local languages. Copies of research reports and other relevant materials should be made available to local communities. Subject to the requirements for anonymity, publications should always refer to the informed consent of participants and give credit to those contributing to the research project. Research on humans should only be undertaken in a manner that respects their privacy and dignity. If anonymity cannot be guaranteed, the subjects must be informed of the possible consequences of becoming involved in the research. All research involving children must be fully justified and never undertaken without the consent of the children and their parents or legal guardians. By providing a platform that brings together a holistic and meaningful conversation, this progress will continue within iassa and forward we suggest the following actions that can be supported by iassa, individual iassa members and the broader research community:Revise iassa research principles to explicitly include indigenous y declare and ensure permanent support for indigenous knowledge within iassa as defined by indigenous peoples, e. The development and supporting an indigenous knowledge working group or task e a white paper synthesizing existing national and international ethical protocols for the engagement of indigenous knowledge and indigenous with indigenous knowledge holders to develop best practices for the engagement and utilization of indigenous knowledge and indigenous knowledge holders within arctic r and facilitate indigenous knowledge workshop(s), early career training opportunities or other engagement formats within te for indigenous knowledge engagement by other arctic research organizations, at the international and national levels (arctic council, iasc, national funding agencies, those that define research needs and other appropriate organizations). Methods that position indigenous communal oral histories as being of equal value to peer-reviewed science in arctic addition, we call on individual researchers to ask themselves: what can i do?
