Ethics Reflection

Table of Contents

Ethics Reflection2

Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research2

Ethical Issues in Quantitative Research3

Strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research methods in terms of ethics4

Strengths and weaknesses of quantitative research methods in terms of ethics5

Important for a research methodology to support a research question6

Research Methodology supported by Data Collection8

Conclusion9

Ethics Reflection

Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research

Ethical issues in qualitative research are more delicate then issues in experimental and survey research. The issues in qualitative research are based on the characteristics of qualitative research or methodology includes the close personal involvement and observation of the participants, interviews and long-term involvement. The qualitative research is based on human interactions and the investigators are themselves measuring instruments. There are different varieties of ethical issues in qualitative research. The research methods of qualitative research are; observations, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (Saunders, 2000).

All the participants must be aware of the purpose of the research in which they are participating, they must know the risks they may face as being the part of the research, participants must be aware of the benefits researcher will get through their participation; they must be free to make decisions regarding their participation. The protection to participants must be given through informed consent process and formalized interaction between respondents and researcher. These are some of the ethical practices in qualitative research and if these practices are not followed then they are considered as ethical issues (Saunders, 2000).

These ethical issues can be rectified by the researchers their self. Researchers can rectify ethical issues by asking questions regarding the research. The example of this can be taken as suppose that researcher has to analyze pattern of social activity. For this researcher has to visit different bars and analyze the pattern by taking their interviews. In order to record the interviews researcher must take the permission from the bar owners. Participants must be informed about the research purpose and all the ethical practices must be followed (Saunders, 2000).

Ethical Issues in Quantitative Research

In quantitative research also researchers have to follow ethical practices other wise research will be considered as unethical research. Ion qualitative research data is usually collected through the instrument called questionnaire. In the quantitative research also all participants must be aware of the research purpose; they must know the reason behind the collections of data and its uses in the study. All the participants must be participating in the research by their own will. Researcher is not allowed to force the respondents to participant in the study (Robson, 2002).

The study must be cleared to all the participants so that they can answer questions accurately. Another important thing is that all the respondents must be relevant to the study. Researchers are not allowed to choose respondents by their own wish. Especially in random sampling researcher must pick respondents randomly. Another ethical issue in quantitative research is of confidentiality of the data. Participants must be making sure that their data would only be use for the study and it will not be use for any other ...