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Gaining approval from your institution’s ethics committee
• Before beginning any research with participants, you generally need to be granted approval from your institution’s ethics committee, a supervisor or instructor. • The granting of ethics approval is your ‘permission’ to begin interacting
with participants.• You need to prove that you are aware of basic ethics concepts and how
they affect your research plans and procedures.• Think of your engagement with the ethics committee as an opportunity
for reflection. Make the most of the process, using it as a chance to think about your responsibilities and ways you can engage with participants constructively.
Defining ethics
• There is a distinction between ethics and legal requirements.• Ethics refers to values or principles that are integral to your research
objectives and define your responsibilities to your participants, your institution and yourself. • Provides guiding principles during the research process. • Essential in order to maintain a positive relationship with your
research participants that will stand the test of time. • Participants need to feel that they are protected and not taken
advantage of.
Purposes of research ethicsIn practice, research ethics helps to achieve the following:• Maintain your integrity. • Ethics promotes good research by establishing that you should be consistently
truthful, seek to gain knowledge and avoid error. • Ethics establishes a set of expectations for your conduct that prohibits
falsifying information, deception or other acts that might bring disrepute on you, the quality of your research or your institution.
• Protect the welfare of others. • A fundamental principle of research ethics is to do no harm to others. • You must ensure your research does not put at risk the welfare or reputation
of those directly or indirectly involved in your research.
• Build support for you and your research. • Good ethical conduct means that those who participate in or view
your research will have a more positive view of both you and yourresearch. • This support means that you are more likely to be able to recruit
participants for your future research and gain help from colleagues.
• Give you direction when facing challenging situations. • Ethical principles help you find your way through challenging
situations.
Research ethics matters
Follow basic ethical principles• Develop your research competence.
• Strive for highest levels of competence in your research practices so that you can make the most of your participants’ contributions.
• Improve your education, hone your skills and reflect on strategies to improve your performance.
• Know the limitations of your ability, skills and training. Don’t take on research tasks that you are not yet ready to handle and seek for help when needed.
• Maintain your personal integrity. • When engaging in all aspects of your research, always maintain a high standard of
personal integrity. • Don’t mislead, deceive or show a lack of respect to anyone engaged in your research.
• Be respectful. • Always remain respectful of differences in gender, race, sexual orientation, physical ability
and national origin.
• Researchers might wonder whether informed consent gives them the right to use the information they have gathered from participants for a purpose that was not originally declared to the participant. • Always make clear to participants how you will use the data collected
from them. • The person giving you permission to use their information has a right
to know how it is going to be used and then decide whether this is an acceptable purpose or not. • You can only use the information gained from participants for the
specific purpose that you declare to them and that they authorise.
A common ethical issue: using data for a different purpose
than originally specified
Your own privacy and research ethics
How much the participants need to know about you? To what extent are you entitled to privacy?• In general, you are entitled to privacy.• You need to provide information to participants that might have a
significant influence on their decision to participate in the research. • If information you are withholding about yourself cannot reasonably
be expected to affect participants’ decision-making about contributing to your research, then you are not obligated to disclose it.
Using information from social media in your research
• Conventional ethical practices cannot be straightforwardly applied to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites. • As long as you are not gathering deeply personal information or using
secretive methods, you are probably still behaving ethically.• Violating someone’s online privacy is just as ethically wrong as doing
it in person.• You should be honest about where
you found online information if yourparticipant asks you.
INFORMED CONSENT
Build your research on informed consent
• You must consider informed consent any time you are gathering data from human participants.• Informed consent develops through a process where you, as a
researcher, inform potential participants about your research in order to gain their voluntary consent to join that research.• You need to clearly explain to participants what your research is
about, how it will be used and what consequences they might face if they participate.
When do you need informed consent?
• The need for informed consent applies to all the information participants reveal to you. However, your responsibility to ‘do no harm’ extends to non-participants, whose words or behaviours are revealed during your research.• It may not be practical or desirable to follow informed consent
procedures in some cases. Information obtained unobtrusively in public spaces (including media) where people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy does not typically require informed consent.• You cannot assume that activity in public spaces does not require
informed consent (e.g. private conversations in public spaces).Sometimes, the validity of your research can be compromised by needing to follow informed consent procedures. If you are in doubt, you should consult your supervisor or ethics committee to get further guidance.
What about online data such as YouTube comments or chatroom conversations?In this case it is helpful dividing online content in two categories depending on whether it is supposed to be public or private and decide accordingly:
Information that is intended to be public• Everything that has a broad potential audience and that does not
require any kind of password access so could be easily read by strangers at any time. • This category should not generally require informed consent
procedures. YouTube video comments would generally fall into this category.
What about online data such as YouTube comments or chatroom conversations?Information that is intended to be private• Information that is more personal and is visible only to those within
the author’s network, such as content on non-public online forums or on parts of Facebook. • This category generally requires seeking the consent of the author.
For Facebook posts that the user has decided to make fully public, anonymising the post may be the best option for making your research ethically compliant by doing no harm.
How to achieve informed consent
There are two different methods of confirming consent to participate in research:• Written consent is generally viewed as the gold standard.• Offers the most protection from a legal standpoint.
• Oral consent is generally considered a weaker form of consent, although I contest this view.• In some situations, gaining consent verbally is superior to using a written
form, such as when a signature can be a threat to maintaining a participant’s anonymity.
• Carefully weigh the relative strength of the form of informed consent versus privacy needs of your respondents.
• When seeking informed consent, make clear: • Participation is voluntary• They have a right to refuse to
participate • They can withdraw from
participation at any point for any reason. (they do not have to tell you what that reason is).
How to achieve informed consent
• You should specify early in the informed consent process whether data will be anonymized (identity not visible to the researcher or in the report) or held confidentially (identity is known to the researcher, but hidden in the report). • When obtaining informed consent, you may need to make it clear that
there are limits to the confidentiality you can offer. • For instance, if you see someone engaged in violent behaviour or learn
that someone else’s life is in danger, you may have an obligation to report it to appropriate authorities.• Permission to electronically record a research interaction must be
explicitly granted.
How to achieve informed consent
When seeking consent, prepare for common questions:• Make sure you have the basics covered: what is your research about?
Who is funding you? Will the participants’ contributions be anonymized?
• You will likely be asked about privacy. • Who will have access to your data? How will the data be used? You also need to
be prepared to explain the implications of participating in your study. • Will they be at risk? Depending on your research topic, participation could entail
very different consequences.
• You might be asked about the identities or statements of other research participants.• If this should happen, you need to consider their privacy. • You should respectfully decline to provide any information about other
participants, including whether they are part of the study.
The eager participantIt can become awkward if a participant says that there is no need for you to explain the informed consent content, or they say they believe and trust you and are agreeing to participate. You don’t want to seem pushy and insistent that they read through the forms as this could create irritation or impatience, yet you also want to meet your ethical obligations.• Acknowledge and express appreciation for their enthusiasm or
willingness to participate.• Say that you are required by your university to review the document. • Offer a compromise and say you will only need a couple minutes to go
through the document.
The sceptical participant• Maintain a pleasant, professional, patient and open disposition. • Re-assure participants that they are totally in control of the process and can
stop at any time in the research for any reason. For example, they can stop an interview midway through or refuse to answer any question they like.
• Offer to explain each part of the form. It’s helpful to provide examples to illustrate each part, providing details about the measures you are taking to ensure their privacy and secure data storage.
Ethics and vulnerable people
• There are additional ethical implications to consider if you intend to conduct research with vulnerable individuals, such as children, people with severe disabilities or the elderly.
• You should carefully consider whether you are prepared and qualified to tackle the additional ethical responsibilities associated with such research because the potential for causing harm to your participants is greater.
• Consider that you may need additional training before embarking on a research project with a vulnerable population. • Assess whether the vulnerable participants are capable of giving
informed consent. • They must be able to understand what participating in your research would
mean, as well as the nature of the risks associated with it.
• If there are guardians responsible for the well-being of your prospective participants, you should also seek their informed consent.
Ethics and vulnerable people
• When working with children, you generally need the consent of their parent, guardian or school (if it has the delegated authority to grant consent). • It is also important to gain the direct consent of the child if possible.
• Participants of all ages may also be emotionally vulnerable. • You could face a difficult decision about whether to engage someone
in research that will likely be personally upsetting (e.g. a victim of abuse).
Ethics and vulnerable people
CONCLUSIONS
• Research ethics is about establishing good practices when seeking participants, engaging with them, and using the data they provide.• You have a responsibility to behave ethically through all phases of
your research, particularly when dealing with personal or sensitive information.• Your ethical responsibilities are most essential when you are working
with vulnerable people.
CONCLUSIONS: Ethics
• Informed consent is the foundation of social research ethics. • The key behind informed consent is recognizing and respecting the
participant’s privacy. • A good general rule is that any information that might reasonably be
considered private requires the participant’s informed consent before you seek it or use it. • Although informed consent is essential for most social research, it
may be unnecessary or even counter-productive in some circumstances (e.g. with publicly available data).• These circumstances are exceptions though, and you should always
think about whether consent is needed.
CONCLUSIONS: Informed consent
