Research Ethics

Abstract

Research ethics have become a growing concern over the years. It basically talks about keeping ethical concerns regarding the physical or psychological damages to the human subjects. While we are conducting any educational research, we should make sure that we are not hurting the privacy or the property of any one. We have to abide by the standard codes of ethics during our study or research.

Research Ethics

Introduction

It is the duty of the researchers to make sure that wherever they are conducting any type of research, they should make sure that they do so within the ethic of respect of the participants, no matter what their paradigm and pattern of research is. This means that the researcher has to fulfill a number of responsibilities while conducting the research which include ensuring privacy, trust, confidentiality, dignity and anonymity. However, when the researcher is using internet as the medium of his research and investigation, these ethical responsibilities get a little complicated for the researcher.

Discussion

Research involving humans as participants raise a number of complicated and unique social, ethical, political and legal issues. Research ethics basically involves the study of ethical issues that are raised when humans are involved as participants in the research. Research ethics include three objectives. The most important and the broadest of all objectives is the protection of human participants. When humans are made the subjects or the participants of the research, they can directly be affected in the whole process. The effects can be physical or non physical. So the researchers have to make sure that during their research their subjects are not harmed in any way. The second objective is to make sure that the research is conducted in such a way that it serves the interests of the individual participants, participating groups or the whole society. The third objective is to study certain projects and activities of research for their ethical reliability, taking into considerations, issues such as risk management, protecting confidential information and the process of informed consent. (Cassell, 1982)

Research ethics have usually been focused on issues that are related to biomedical research. The relevance of research ethics has grown over the last century and has subjected many of the existing statutes, principles and guidelines for the ethical standard of research. However, in many researches related to humanity and social sciences, many different kinds of ethical issues come up. The new and rising research methods including auto-ethnography and participatory action research give rise to many important but different kinds of ethical issues and obligations for researchers. The kinds of research that involves people who are vulnerable such as children, or people with cognitive or any developmental disabilities, or people who are institutionalized, or homeless people, or these people who don't have any legal status raises issues, that are unique in any research context.

Today, the research ethicists are challenged by a number of issues regarding global concerns in other domains, for example, the standard of research in the developing countries, the limits of research that includes genetic material, ...