RESEARCH ETHICS

DR. KHALID MANZOOR BUTT

RESEARCH ETHICS
• Democratic or Humane attitude
• Feudal or authoritarian attitude
In a class-culture, upper class generally does not give proper respect to lower
class.
Do not respect rights privacy and honor of lower class.
Take them for granted but when that class interact with upper class they
become respectful.
Actually they use to exploit their vulnerability and weakness.
The right to carry out research is a form of freedom of thought and expression,
one of the basic rights of citizens.
The right to carry out research, social researchers must be careful to respect,
other rights which are equally important and may be subverted or come into
conflict with one another in the course of a research project.
THE ABUSES OF SOCIAL RESEARCH
 
By delving into the social experiences of individuals, groups, or
organizations, social researchers may threaten or harm those they are
studying.
Social researchers must consider the ethical aspects of their studies and
decide whether their research plans need to be altered or radically changed to
meet ethical standards before they proceed with their projects.
 
 The primary types of abuses
 The ethical considerations required to avoid research abuses.
PRIMARY AREAS OF POSSIBLE ABUSES IN
SOCIAL RESEARCH
 
Certain studies in sociology in which very private behavior, such as
prostitution, gambling and homo-sexual encounter has been observed.
Researcher intends to get very personal information about life of target person.
(Does such research legitimate?)
Does such research harmful or problematic (morally and physically) for the
researcher.

I do want to sensitize you to some of the primary concerns different types of

research methods pose, and in order to do that, it is necessary to give some
examples of studies that have raised ethical questions.
THREE TYPES OF RESEARCH
PROCEDURES
 Three types of research procedures may raise ethical concerns.

 Covert Research
 Tampering with Results
 Plagiarism
 COVERT RESEARCH
Entails some forms of deception.
In certain ethically questionable practices as a part of a study.
It is also considered an invasion of privacy.

There are social institutions whose activities are considered so important that social
scientists want to uncover more fully the nature of social interaction and influence in such
environments, even in institutions where open study would clearly affect their proper
functioning.

Covert research involves carrying out research without the knowledge or consent of those
being studies: it may involve the researcher misrepresenting his or her role as a researcher
in order to enter the environment to be studied as an actual participant.
 
MENTAL HOSPITAL
 
Covert research often takes the form of giving false information to or about
subjects to deceive them into believing something for the purpose of studying
their reactions. In a study of mental hospital wards, for example, a researcher
gets himself admitted in the mental hospital word with false name.

To know the behavior of staff towards patients.

Could this finding have been established with out the use of covert methods?
Were the rights of the mental hospital staff infringed on by the covert activities
of the researchers?
Police Station
 

Hidden microphones were placed in a jury room, as a means of studying jury

deliberations. The jurors, however, were not informed that their discussions were
being recorded.

The social scientists and law professors who were carrying out this research were
interested in the human behavior or jurors as they interacted during their
deliberations.

They believed that such knowledge would lead to a greater understanding of the
legal system.
The researchers also took extreme precautions to hide the identities of the jurors
and handle the tapes with care.
ON THE JURY
However, once this research became known, a Senate subcommittee
held public hearings on the ethics of taping juries, and this led to the
passage of a law forbidding the recordings of the deliberations of juries.
 
Can it be said that this interest is more important than maintaining the
principle of absolute confidentiality regarding jury deliberations.
CONCLUSION
 
In the mental hospital study, the role of the researcher was covert and deceptive; in
the police station, the policemen were deceived about the significance of the study.
In all three cases the presumed benefits of greater and closer understanding of
socially important contexts.
 Some would point out that there is no clear penalty for doing covert research
and that many such studies have been considered classic research efforts.
 Others have concluded that such research should be avoided.
What Measures
Conceal names of the staffers – fictitious names should be used generalize
reporting of behavior.
 COERCION OF SUBJECTS
 
Research is the coercion (either explicit or implicit) of subjects to participate in a
specific study, to engage in behaviors that might lead to psychological or physical harm.
“Captive” such as prisoners, children and subordinates, may not be able to withhold
compliance from an authority figure who asks them to cooperate.
 
They can get favor in return for compliance.
If a researcher uses influence of any person, position or institution over the population
understudy. It can fringe their independence, rights, dignity and ownership. Actually
they are not free to say no. They have to comply.
 

That may be pressed to participate in a research project or comply with the researcher’s
demand.
INVASION OF PRIVACY
 
Can be considered as invading someone’s privacy.
 
In the United States, the question “Where were you born?” is rarely
considered an invasion of privacy, yet if this were asked of an illegal alien; it
might be a threatening question.

The question “Are you a drinker?” would widely be considered as addressing

a private matter, not something a person would expound on to a stranger.
Yet such behavior became the subject of a study that has been widely viewed
as raising ethical concerns.
 TAMPERING WITH RESULTS
 
Ethnical issues also allies in the reporting of social research.
Cases have come to light in which the handling of scientific data has been
questioned.
Using different set of data – Their arrangements coding and tests.
One should not temper the result, if the result of research goes against the
hypothesis or required results wanted by researcher or funding agency.

To satisfy the desire sometime researcher changes the result.

TAMPERING WITH RESULTS

In the well-known research on IQ and heredity, Cyril Burt’s evidence on

the correlation between IQ scores of identical twins reared apart
compared to identical twins reared together had been used by numerous
other researchers as the foundation for arguing that hereditary factors are
more important than environmental ones in determining intelligence.
After Burt’s evidence more carefully came to question it.

It would be highly improbable statistically to arrive at the same

correlation using different sets of data.
 PLAGIARISM
This is the act of plagiarism, which occurs infrequently in the writings of social
researchers.
Students’ reasons for plagiarizing are usually different from those of social
researchers. If a researcher is suspected of using someone else’s material without
citation or of cheating in the collection or presentation of data, that person’s
career can be damaged.
Closely related to altering the results is the incorporation of someone else’s work
into one’s own without proper acknowledgement.
In case of students, the action is usually a short cut to meeting the requirements
for a course without actually doing the required assignment.
PLAGIARISM
Destroys integrity of researcher.
Undermines the trust between students and teachers.
Using someone else’s material without citation or of cheating in the
collection or presentation of data, that person’s career can be irreparably
damaged.
Now Rule has bee made to check this practice.
 THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY VS. THE PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO KNOW

By focusing on the protection of individual rights, are we confining social

research to the study of those who have nothing to hide or those who lack the
power to refuse to be studied?

Consider how journalists operate. Their primary value is the public’s right to
know.
They have secured their right to research for information on people in public
positions and public organizations.
THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY VS. THE
PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO KNOW
The Watergate story was uncovered by the press. By using unnamed informants and
other tactics to get at the story, reporters made those in power accountable.
Studies of corporations can be successful if the researcher is able to establish a
relationship of trust with a number of individuals in the organization who can serve as
major informants and supporters.

If there is potential harm to the right of privacy of those being studied, that harm must be
considered in relation to the right to know. As Cassell (1978) puts it, the risk of doing
research must be weighed in relation to the benefits.
Keep in mind to reduce abuses in social research that this concern should not result in
choosing to carry out studies only on “safe” subjects (that is, on those with little power).
In addition, you should treat all your subjects fairly and uniformly regardless of their
status.
 MEANS FOR ENSURING THE PROTECTION
OF SUBJECTS
There are various approaches to ensuring the protection of the respondents.
Questionnaires often elicit information regarding attitudes toward minority
groups, religious beliefs and behaviors, levels of income, and sexual activities.
Survey researchers have long recognized that such questions may deter some
respondents from completing the instrument.

Depending on the objectives of the survey research, such information may be

vital.
Remember that information on specific individuals is not the goal. It is the
aggregate data representing the entire sample that interests the researcher.
MEANS FOR ENSURING
THE PROTECTION OF SUBJECTS

Most potential respondents would not be concerned about having

information about their income (or even their sexual activity) used to
held establish a norm for a larger group.
How can their privacy be guaranteed?
Three principles can be used to help establish such privacy: anonymity,
confidentiality, and informed consent.
ANONYMITY
Granting information to someone who promises that you will remain completely
anonymous is the maximum assurance you can receive that your privacy will not be
invaded.
Anonymity implies that no one, not even the researcher, could connect your name with
the information about you.
Thus anonymity is an assurance that subjects’ identities will not be disclosed in any way.
How can this be done?
One should not use name of the respondent in such cases.
If questionnaires are mailed to respondents who return them without any form of code or
identifying information on them, they are completely anonymous.
If a questionnaire remains completely anonymous, the researcher will be unable to
determine who has and who has not answered.
CONFIDENTIALITY
 Confidentiality is a promise to keep the identities of the subjects known only
to the researcher and perhaps selected members of his or her staff and to
minimize in any available way the possible exposure of a subject’s identity.
 This is often done through the use of code numbers on surveys or
pseudonyms for persons and places that might be identifiable.
 Sometimes the code lists and their corresponding names are held at locations
distant from the site of the research and access to this list is strictly limited to
the researcher alone.
 A list of code numbers may be destroyed when it is not longer needed.
 Confidentiality can again be guaranteed by procedures to store the data on
subjects under codes and fictitious names.
CONFIDENTIALITY

 In some field studies where confidentiality has been promised the resulting
published studies may nevertheless make it possible for subjects and others
to identify specific people and places in the study.
 You may want to warn participants that although confidentiality is the goal,
under certain conditions the identities of certain persons and places may be
recognized.
 Such a warning might form a part of an informed consent statement.
CONSENT OF THE SUBJECTS
 The subject has knowingly agreed to the research in which he or she is participating.
 Informed consent is achieved if the subject knows what the study is understands his
or her level of confidentiality in the study, comprehends the objectives of the study,
and agrees to cooperate.
 Under such conditions, the onus of invasion of privacy is lifted and the problem of
coercion is avoided.
 In such a case, participation is voluntary. What is crucial here is that the subject be
truly informed.
 First, the researcher should give the subject accurate and complete information on the
nature and purpose of the study and the part the subject will play in it.
 Second, Informed consent also presupposes that the subject is \capable of
understanding what he or she is consenting to and has been given a clear explanation
of what that is.
CONSENT OF THE SUBJECTS
 In these cases, greater care must be taken to explain the study in a
comprehensible fashion.
 People with lower status and less power are often less capable of refusing
to be studies. They may not understand the meaning of the informed
consent statements and may think they have not option but to agree to a
request by a higher-status, educated social scientist.
 The social researcher cannot tell a person that he or she is incapable of
understanding whether to participate. The only sensible course of action
seems to be to develop an informed consent statement appropriate for the
intended audience.
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Whose rights are more sacred, those of the scientist, those of individuals or
institutions who may be studied by scientists, or those of the public to learn
from the research?
 

The Scientific Right to Study Any Subject of Interest

This right, however, carries with it the responsibility that the research
conforms to scientific rules and that these rules include the protection of
human subjects.
USE OF HIGH TECHNICAL STANDARDS

 Topics must be studied in accordance with the highest technical standards

of the methods available to the researcher to obtain the necessary data.
 To maintain high technical standards, researchers must be familiar with
both the range of types of research already available on a given topic and
the methods used to study this topic.
 They must know which studies have been most successful in gaining the
desired information, and they must understand precisely the procedures by
which these studies have been carried out.
FULL DISCLOSURE
 Science requires that all evidence generated and analyzed be made
available to the relevant scientific community.

 This means that all aspects of a research project must be open for the
inspection and understanding of others.
 In cases where confidentiality has been guaranteed, this somewhat reduces
the full measure of disclosure.

 The procedures and findings of a study fully enough available to the reader
that he or she could replicate the study.
THE RIGHTS OF HUMAN SUBJECTS
 Human subjects have the right not to be physically or psychologically
abused they have the right of privacy and protection of their reputations.

 A substantial case can be made for the rights of privacy of individuals.

 The institutions in which most scientists do their work require that all
research on human subjects be approved by an institutional review board
and all grants received from the government must also go through such an
appraisal.
 WHOSE RIGHTS?
Many would contend that the rights of individuals to privacy and freedom from harassment
and harm supersede the rights of scientists to seek knowledge. (a conflict situation)

There may be instances in which it is necessary to study individuals without their explicit
permission in order to secure the public’s right to know. Perhaps the best middle ground is
to try to gain access to “difficult-to-enter” organizations and situations by serving in a role
different from that of a researcher.
Study of the treatment of mental institution patients offered keen insights into important
institutions and forms of human behavior that might not have been gleaned by another
method.

Covert research methods have enabled researchers to study socially undesirable behaviors.
 THE IMPORTANCE OF TRUST
Social science is an interactive human activity, meaning that it requires the scientist to
act in relation to other human beings.
It is better that each researcher establish a level of trust among participants necessary in
whatever social environment is being studied such that those being studied understand
that their rights are being protected and find their participation in the study beneficial.

Most individuals are fascinated with their own lives, with their own social memberships
and social environments. To share this knowledge with an interested and sympathetic
outsider whom they have come to trust is for many people a rewarding experience.
You should select an environment for your research that allows you to be forthright
about who you are, what you are up to, and why someone should view involvement in
your study as beneficial.