ethics

All major projects require ethical approval and the ethical approval form guidance is attached here:

In some ways this is straightforward. You have CRB clearance, of course, and what you are doing is in the normal course of professional development. However do try to get a wider view of the issue but completing the attached form. This is our entry on ethics in Hammond, M. and Wellington, J. (2013) Research Methods: The Key Concepts, London: Routledge.

Morals underpin ethics, but the two terms are not quite synonymous. An 'ethic' is a moral principle or a code of conduct which actually governs what people do. It is concerned with the way people act or behave. The term 'ethics' usually refers to the moral principles guiding conduct, which are held by a group or even a profession (though there is no logical reason why individuals should not have their own ethical code). The conduct of research should be not only ethical in the particular sense that relevant procedures have been undertaken but ethical in spirit in the respect shown to others, the purpose of the research, who it benefits and how it is reported. Questions arise if:

The design or planning of the research involves treating particular individuals or groups unfairly, for example by using an experimental and a control group and unethically rewarding or mistreating one.The methods employed involve subterfuge, for example by using covert terms of access or if consent is forcedThe analysis (or manipulation) of the data ignores certain results or observations or selectively filters out qualitative data if they do not 'fit' a hypothesis.The presentation or reporting of the research is disrespectful, for example revealing names or portraying a group of respondents using inflammatory languageThe findings or conclusions of the research go beyond the data in order to reflect the researcher’s own opinion and values.

Debates on codes of conduct governing research should be on-going if they are to avoid some of the moral catastrophes of the past. In social research the most troubling accounts of unethical behaviour often concern observer participation, for example in ethnographic studies. However ethical catastrophes are not confined to one type of study as further examples show. One case is Dennis and Dennis’s study in the USA in 1941. They ‘obtained’ girl twins who they raised for over a year in order to investigate child development under conditions of ‘minimum social stimulation’ (Dennis, 1941). They concluded, as it happened, that lack of social interaction and stimulation had limited effect on the children – this may have been that the conditions were not as ‘minimal’ as may have been thought or because they had not focused on language development. A second example concerns an English psychologist Burt who was widely seen as twisting, manipulating and even fraudulently misrepresenting his later data on hereditary and intelligence. A third example covers similar ground - Jensen’s notorious study of ‘race’ and ‘intelligence’ (Jensen, 1973) in which it was concluded that black children had inherently lower intelligence than white children. Failure to look critically at the fundamental flaws in Jensen’s methodology and inferences may have led to subsequent prejudice amongst many teachers and educators.

Ethical codes have changed over time. For example Milgram’s (1963) famous experiment on obedience in which subjects were encouraged to administer what they, wrongly believed, was an electric shock to an actor pretending to take part in a memory experiment caused some participants great distress. Such research would not get ethical approval today but questions of deception and distress were rarely, if at all, commented on at the time. Indeed the present climate in regards to both ethical approval and health and safety considerations make experimental and ethnographic approaches of the past increasingly difficult to carry out. Most, if not all, ethical approval committees today would struggle with quite mild and on the face of it harmless forms of deception such as ‘mystery shopper’ techniques which involve researchers approaching providers and pretending to be customers in order to understand the market. It is right that there are checks in place to stop researchers ‘cutting ethical corners’ as was once the case. However, it is startling that when we live in a world of ever loosening ethical standards in the media, and a pushing of boundaries of taste and surveillance in electronic media, just how restrictive have become the norms for carrying out academic research.

Most if not all research is governed by professional association and institutional guidelines and these can be particularly helpful in understanding both legal and ethical requirements when working with young and or vulnerable people. Perhaps the overriding rule is that honesty and openness should prevail in the relationship between researchers and those who participate in research. Nearly all researchers are very aware of ethical codes and procedures and follow them. However they do struggle to understand their relevance when they see themselves as honest and trustworthy and the research as useful and worthwhile. Indeed many social researchers fail to appreciate how spectacularly ethical guidelines can be breached. Often researchers can be quite frustrated by ethical codes – we can recall a researcher going to great lengths to get approval for filming a classroom for research purposes only to find that one child had left a permission slip at home and the filming was called off. At other times the codes themselves do not really describe how to deal with real life dilemmas, for example the desire to act on a respondent’s reporting of bullying in the work place while maintaining confidentiality and anonymity.

References

Dennis, W. (1941) Infant development under condition of minimum social stimulation, Genetic Psychology Monographs, 23, 143-189.

Milgram, S. (1963) Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67 (4): 371-8.

Jensen, A. (1973) Educability and group differences. London: Methuen.