Ethics and Qualitative Research

Table of Contents

Introduction2

Ethics and Qualitative Research3

Significance of Ethical Qualitative Research4

Ethical Considerations5

Informed Consent5

Confidentiality Concerns6

Internal Validity Concerns6

External Validity Concerns7

Limitation of the Study7

Conclusion7

References9

Ethics and Qualitative Research

Introduction

The purpose of this assignment is to discuss the ethical issues in understanding the qualitative research which includes the one-on-one in-depth interviews and focus groups. Basically, this paper will focus on the ethical dilemmas a researcher face and how it can be overcome. The ethical issues in the qualitative research are based on the harmful effects from alcohol which are responsible for 3.2% of total burden of disease in Australia in 2003, of which alcohol abuse, road traffic accidents and suicide contributed two thirds of the harm. I have received funding from the Office of Road Safety to undertake a qualitative study involving both one-on-one in-depth interviews and focus groups to explore the impact of injuries sustained in a traffic accident, where the driver of one of the cars involved had a blood alcohol level over 0.05 [21].

Modern science logged multiple ways of thinking about qualitative research. The contradiction between qualitative research approaches and conventional is not only in contradiction methodological, but also appears in the contradictoriness, in the epistemological field. This means that not only appears on the instruments, but in the central processes that characterize the production of knowledge. I believe that the qualitative epistemology is based on principles that have important methodological consequences [5].

Ethical issues in qualitative research arise primarily from the emerging nature, creative, unpredictable, flexible and elastic methodology. Therefore, the major ethical issues related to the process of qualitative research are related to informed consent, confidentiality, researcher-participant relationship and the risk-benefit ratio.

Informed consent is an ethical code initially developed in the biomedical field and arises from the question about the information to be given to patients before a possible treatment. It was intended to prevent experimental practices that would violate individual rights [13].

Ethics and Qualitative Research

Scientific knowledge from qualitative research is not legitimized by the number of subjects studied, but by the quality of its expression. The number of subjects to study responds to a qualitative criterion, defined primarily by the needs of the knowledge process discovered in the course of the investigation. Individual expression of the subject acquires significance as the place which may have at one point for the production of ideas by the researcher. The information conveyed by a particular subject can be a significant moment for the production of knowledge, without necessarily having to be repeated in other subjects [1].

Qualitative research shares many aspects with conventional research ethics. Thus, the ethical issues are applicable to science in general to qualitative research. Obviously, knowing the complexity of ethics and moral philosophy, it is recommended that a discussion that is intended to approach ethical judgments of qualitative research should be supported by several theories. But there are so many theories that a well-intentioned effort to implement many of them in the analysis of a specific investigation can become unproductive.

Particularly in the case of qualitative research, it ...