10.2: Ethics of Primary Research

Both projects listed above included primary research on human participants; therefore, Derek and Jared both had to consider research ethics throughout their primary research process. As Earl Babbie writes in The Practice of Social Research, throughout the early and middle parts of the twentieth century researchers took advantage of participants and treated them unethically. During World War II, Nazi doctors performed heinous experiments on prisoners without their consent, while in the U.S., a number of medical and psychological experiments on caused patients undue mental and physical trauma and, in some cases, death. Because of these and other similar events, many nations have established ethical laws and guidelines for researchers who work with human participants. In the United States, the guidelines for the ethical treatment of human research participants are described in The Belmont Report, released in 1979. Today, universities have Institutional Review Boards (or IRBs) that oversee research. Students conducting research as part of a class may not need permission from the university’s IRB, although they still need to ensure that they follow ethical guidelines in research. The following provides a brief overview of ethical considerations:

• Voluntary participation. The Belmont Report suggests that, in
most cases, you need to get permission from people before
you involve them in any primary research you are conducting.
If you are doing a survey or interview, your participants
must first agree to fill out your survey or to be interviewed.
Consent for observations can be more complicated, and is discussed
later in the essay.

• Confidentiality and anonymity. Your participants may reveal
embarrassing or potentially damaging information such as
racist comments or unconventional behavior. In these cases,
you should keep your participants’ identities anonymous
when writing your results. An easy way to do this is to create
a “pseudonym” (or false name) for them so that their identity
is protected.

• Researcher bias. There is little point in collecting data and
learning about something if you already think you know the
answer! Bias might be present in the way you ask questions,
the way you take notes, or the conclusions you draw from the
data you collect.

The above are only three of many considerations when involving human participants in your primary research. For a complete understanding of ethical considerations please refer to The Belmont Report.

Now that we have considered the ethical implications of research, we will examine how to formulate research questions and plan your primary research project.