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• Ethical Considerations in Research | Types & Examples

Ethical Considerations in Research | Types & Examples

Published on October 18, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on May 9, 2024.

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from people.

The goals of human research often include understanding real-life phenomena, studying effective treatments, investigating behaviors, and improving lives in other ways. What you decide to research and how you conduct that research involve key ethical considerations.

These considerations work to

• protect the rights of research participants
• enhance research validity
• maintain scientific or academic integrity

Table of contents

Why do research ethics matter, getting ethical approval for your study, types of ethical issues, voluntary participation, informed consent, confidentiality, potential for harm, results communication, examples of ethical failures, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research ethics.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe for research subjects.

You’ll balance pursuing important research objectives with using ethical research methods and procedures. It’s always necessary to prevent permanent or excessive harm to participants, whether inadvertent or not.

Defying research ethics will also lower the credibility of your research because it’s hard for others to trust your data if your methods are morally questionable.

Even if a research idea is valuable to society, it doesn’t justify violating the human rights or dignity of your study participants.

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Before you start any study involving data collection with people, you’ll submit your research proposal to an institutional review board (IRB) .

An IRB is a committee that checks whether your research aims and research design are ethically acceptable and follow your institution’s code of conduct. They check that your research materials and procedures are up to code.

If successful, you’ll receive IRB approval, and you can begin collecting data according to the approved procedures. If you want to make any changes to your procedures or materials, you’ll need to submit a modification application to the IRB for approval.

If unsuccessful, you may be asked to re-submit with modifications or your research proposal may receive a rejection. To get IRB approval, it’s important to explicitly note how you’ll tackle each of the ethical issues that may arise in your study.

There are several ethical issues you should always pay attention to in your research design, and these issues can overlap with each other.

You’ll usually outline ways you’ll deal with each issue in your research proposal if you plan to collect data from participants.

Voluntary participation means that all research subjects are free to choose to participate without any pressure or coercion.

All participants are able to withdraw from, or leave, the study at any point without feeling an obligation to continue. Your participants don’t need to provide a reason for leaving the study.

It’s important to make it clear to participants that there are no negative consequences or repercussions to their refusal to participate. After all, they’re taking the time to help you in the research process , so you should respect their decisions without trying to change their minds.

Voluntary participation is an ethical principle protected by international law and many scientific codes of conduct.

Take special care to ensure there’s no pressure on participants when you’re working with vulnerable groups of people who may find it hard to stop the study even when they want to.

Informed consent refers to a situation in which all potential participants receive and understand all the information they need to decide whether they want to participate. This includes information about the study’s benefits, risks, funding, and institutional approval.

You make sure to provide all potential participants with all the relevant information about

• what the study is about
• the risks and benefits of taking part
• how long the study will take
• your supervisor’s contact information and the institution’s approval number

Usually, you’ll provide participants with a text for them to read and ask them if they have any questions. If they agree to participate, they can sign or initial the consent form. Note that this may not be sufficient for informed consent when you work with particularly vulnerable groups of people.

If you’re collecting data from people with low literacy, make sure to verbally explain the consent form to them before they agree to participate.

For participants with very limited English proficiency, you should always translate the study materials or work with an interpreter so they have all the information in their first language.

In research with children, you’ll often need informed permission for their participation from their parents or guardians. Although children cannot give informed consent, it’s best to also ask for their assent (agreement) to participate, depending on their age and maturity level.

Anonymity means that you don’t know who the participants are and you can’t link any individual participant to their data.

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information—for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, and videos.

In many cases, it may be impossible to truly anonymize data collection . For example, data collected in person or by phone cannot be considered fully anonymous because some personal identifiers (demographic information or phone numbers) are impossible to hide.

You’ll also need to collect some identifying information if you give your participants the option to withdraw their data at a later stage.

Data pseudonymization is an alternative method where you replace identifying information about participants with pseudonymous, or fake, identifiers. The data can still be linked to participants but it’s harder to do so because you separate personal information from the study data.

Confidentiality means that you know who the participants are, but you remove all identifying information from your report.

All participants have a right to privacy, so you should protect their personal data for as long as you store or use it. Even when you can’t collect data anonymously, you should secure confidentiality whenever you can.

Some research designs aren’t conducive to confidentiality, but it’s important to make all attempts and inform participants of the risks involved.

As a researcher, you have to consider all possible sources of harm to participants. Harm can come in many different forms.

• Psychological harm: Sensitive questions or tasks may trigger negative emotions such as shame or anxiety.
• Social harm: Participation can involve social risks, public embarrassment, or stigma.
• Physical harm: Pain or injury can result from the study procedures.
• Legal harm: Reporting sensitive data could lead to legal risks or a breach of privacy.

It’s best to consider every possible source of harm in your study as well as concrete ways to mitigate them. Involve your supervisor to discuss steps for harm reduction.

Make sure to disclose all possible risks of harm to participants before the study to get informed consent. If there is a risk of harm, prepare to provide participants with resources or counseling or medical services if needed.

Some of these questions may bring up negative emotions, so you inform participants about the sensitive nature of the survey and assure them that their responses will be confidential.

The way you communicate your research results can sometimes involve ethical issues. Good science communication is honest, reliable, and credible. It’s best to make your results as transparent as possible.

Take steps to actively avoid plagiarism and research misconduct wherever possible.

Plagiarism means submitting others’ works as your own. Although it can be unintentional, copying someone else’s work without proper credit amounts to stealing. It’s an ethical problem in research communication because you may benefit by harming other researchers.

Self-plagiarism is when you republish or re-submit parts of your own papers or reports without properly citing your original work.

This is problematic because you may benefit from presenting your ideas as new and original even though they’ve already been published elsewhere in the past. You may also be infringing on your previous publisher’s copyright, violating an ethical code, or wasting time and resources by doing so.

In extreme cases of self-plagiarism, entire datasets or papers are sometimes duplicated. These are major ethical violations because they can skew research findings if taken as original data.

You notice that two published studies have similar characteristics even though they are from different years. Their sample sizes, locations, treatments, and results are highly similar, and the studies share one author in common.

Research misconduct

Research misconduct means making up or falsifying data, manipulating data analyses, or misrepresenting results in research reports. It’s a form of academic fraud.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement about data analyses.

Research misconduct is a serious ethical issue because it can undermine academic integrity and institutional credibility. It leads to a waste of funding and resources that could have been used for alternative research.

Later investigations revealed that they fabricated and manipulated their data to show a nonexistent link between vaccines and autism. Wakefield also neglected to disclose important conflicts of interest, and his medical license was taken away.

This fraudulent work sparked vaccine hesitancy among parents and caregivers. The rate of MMR vaccinations in children fell sharply, and measles outbreaks became more common due to a lack of herd immunity.

Research scandals with ethical failures are littered throughout history, but some took place not that long ago.

Some scientists in positions of power have historically mistreated or even abused research participants to investigate research problems at any cost. These participants were prisoners, under their care, or otherwise trusted them to treat them with dignity.

To demonstrate the importance of research ethics, we’ll briefly review two research studies that violated human rights in modern history.

These experiments were inhumane and resulted in trauma, permanent disabilities, or death in many cases.

After some Nazi doctors were put on trial for their crimes, the Nuremberg Code of research ethics for human experimentation was developed in 1947 to establish a new standard for human experimentation in medical research.

In reality, the actual goal was to study the effects of the disease when left untreated, and the researchers never informed participants about their diagnoses or the research aims.

Although participants experienced severe health problems, including blindness and other complications, the researchers only pretended to provide medical care.

When treatment became possible in 1943, 11 years after the study began, none of the participants were offered it, despite their health conditions and high risk of death.

Ethical failures like these resulted in severe harm to participants, wasted resources, and lower trust in science and scientists. This is why all research institutions have strict ethical guidelines for performing research.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Measures of central tendency
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Thematic analysis
• Cohort study
• Peer review
• Ethnography

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Conformity bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Availability heuristic
• Attrition bias
• Social desirability bias

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. These principles include voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, potential for harm, and results communication.

Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from others .

These considerations protect the rights of research participants, enhance research validity , and maintain scientific integrity.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe.

Anonymity means you don’t know who the participants are, while confidentiality means you know who they are but remove identifying information from your research report. Both are important ethical considerations .

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information—for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, or videos.

You can keep data confidential by using aggregate information in your research report, so that you only refer to groups of participants rather than individuals.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement but a serious ethical failure.

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When most people think of ethics (or morals), they think of rules for distinguishing between right and wrong, such as the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), a code of professional conduct like the Hippocratic Oath ("First of all, do no harm"), a religious creed like the Ten Commandments ("Thou Shalt not kill..."), or a wise aphorisms like the sayings of Confucius. This is the most common way of defining "ethics": norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Most people learn ethical norms at home, at school, in church, or in other social settings. Although most people acquire their sense of right and wrong during childhood, moral development occurs throughout life and human beings pass through different stages of growth as they mature. Ethical norms are so ubiquitous that one might be tempted to regard them as simple commonsense. On the other hand, if morality were nothing more than commonsense, then why are there so many ethical disputes and issues in our society?

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One plausible explanation of these disagreements is that all people recognize some common ethical norms but interpret, apply, and balance them in different ways in light of their own values and life experiences. For example, two people could agree that murder is wrong but disagree about the morality of abortion because they have different understandings of what it means to be a human being.

Most societies also have legal rules that govern behavior, but ethical norms tend to be broader and more informal than laws. Although most societies use laws to enforce widely accepted moral standards and ethical and legal rules use similar concepts, ethics and law are not the same. An action may be legal but unethical or illegal but ethical. We can also use ethical concepts and principles to criticize, evaluate, propose, or interpret laws. Indeed, in the last century, many social reformers have urged citizens to disobey laws they regarded as immoral or unjust laws. Peaceful civil disobedience is an ethical way of protesting laws or expressing political viewpoints.

Another way of defining 'ethics' focuses on the disciplines that study standards of conduct, such as philosophy, theology, law, psychology, or sociology. For example, a "medical ethicist" is someone who studies ethical standards in medicine. One may also define ethics as a method, procedure, or perspective for deciding how to act and for analyzing complex problems and issues. For instance, in considering a complex issue like global warming , one may take an economic, ecological, political, or ethical perspective on the problem. While an economist might examine the cost and benefits of various policies related to global warming, an environmental ethicist could examine the ethical values and principles at stake.

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Many different disciplines, institutions , and professions have standards for behavior that suit their particular aims and goals. These standards also help members of the discipline to coordinate their actions or activities and to establish the public's trust of the discipline. For instance, ethical standards govern conduct in medicine, law, engineering, and business. Ethical norms also serve the aims or goals of research and apply to people who conduct scientific research or other scholarly or creative activities. There is even a specialized discipline, research ethics, which studies these norms. See Glossary of Commonly Used Terms in Research Ethics and Research Ethics Timeline .

There are several reasons why it is important to adhere to ethical norms in research. First, norms promote the aims of research , such as knowledge, truth, and avoidance of error. For example, prohibitions against fabricating , falsifying, or misrepresenting research data promote the truth and minimize error.

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Second, since research often involves a great deal of cooperation and coordination among many different people in different disciplines and institutions, ethical standards promote the values that are essential to collaborative work , such as trust, accountability, mutual respect, and fairness. For example, many ethical norms in research, such as guidelines for authorship , copyright and patenting policies , data sharing policies, and confidentiality rules in peer review, are designed to protect intellectual property interests while encouraging collaboration. Most researchers want to receive credit for their contributions and do not want to have their ideas stolen or disclosed prematurely.

Third, many of the ethical norms help to ensure that researchers can be held accountable to the public . For instance, federal policies on research misconduct, conflicts of interest, the human subjects protections, and animal care and use are necessary in order to make sure that researchers who are funded by public money can be held accountable to the public.

Fourth, ethical norms in research also help to build public support for research. People are more likely to fund a research project if they can trust the quality and integrity of research.

Finally, many of the norms of research promote a variety of other important moral and social values , such as social responsibility, human rights, animal welfare, compliance with the law, and public health and safety. Ethical lapses in research can significantly harm human and animal subjects, students, and the public. For example, a researcher who fabricates data in a clinical trial may harm or even kill patients, and a researcher who fails to abide by regulations and guidelines relating to radiation or biological safety may jeopardize his health and safety or the health and safety of staff and students.

Codes and Policies for Research Ethics

Given the importance of ethics for the conduct of research, it should come as no surprise that many different professional associations, government agencies, and universities have adopted specific codes, rules, and policies relating to research ethics. Many government agencies have ethics rules for funded researchers.

• National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• National Science Foundation (NSF)
• Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• Singapore Statement on Research Integrity
• American Chemical Society, The Chemist Professional’s Code of Conduct
• Code of Ethics (American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science)
• American Psychological Association, Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct
• Statement on Professional Ethics (American Association of University Professors)
• Nuremberg Code
• World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki

Ethical Principles

The following is a rough and general summary of some ethical principles that various codes address*:

Strive for honesty in all scientific communications. Honestly report data, results, methods and procedures, and publication status. Do not fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent data. Do not deceive colleagues, research sponsors, or the public.

Objectivity

Strive to avoid bias in experimental design, data analysis, data interpretation, peer review, personnel decisions, grant writing, expert testimony, and other aspects of research where objectivity is expected or required. Avoid or minimize bias or self-deception. Disclose personal or financial interests that may affect research.

Keep your promises and agreements; act with sincerity; strive for consistency of thought and action.

Carefulness

Avoid careless errors and negligence; carefully and critically examine your own work and the work of your peers. Keep good records of research activities, such as data collection, research design, and correspondence with agencies or journals.

Share data, results, ideas, tools, resources. Be open to criticism and new ideas.

Transparency

Disclose methods, materials, assumptions, analyses, and other information needed to evaluate your research.

Accountability

Take responsibility for your part in research and be prepared to give an account (i.e. an explanation or justification) of what you did on a research project and why.

Intellectual Property

Honor patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property. Do not use unpublished data, methods, or results without permission. Give proper acknowledgement or credit for all contributions to research. Never plagiarize.

Confidentiality

Protect confidential communications, such as papers or grants submitted for publication, personnel records, trade or military secrets, and patient records.

Responsible Publication

Publish in order to advance research and scholarship, not to advance just your own career. Avoid wasteful and duplicative publication.

Responsible Mentoring

Help to educate, mentor, and advise students. Promote their welfare and allow them to make their own decisions.

Respect for Colleagues

Respect your colleagues and treat them fairly.

Social Responsibility

Strive to promote social good and prevent or mitigate social harms through research, public education, and advocacy.

Non-Discrimination

Avoid discrimination against colleagues or students on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or other factors not related to scientific competence and integrity.

Maintain and improve your own professional competence and expertise through lifelong education and learning; take steps to promote competence in science as a whole.

Know and obey relevant laws and institutional and governmental policies.

Animal Care

Show proper respect and care for animals when using them in research. Do not conduct unnecessary or poorly designed animal experiments.

Human Subjects protection

When conducting research on human subjects, minimize harms and risks and maximize benefits; respect human dignity, privacy, and autonomy; take special precautions with vulnerable populations; and strive to distribute the benefits and burdens of research fairly.

* Adapted from Shamoo A and Resnik D. 2015. Responsible Conduct of Research, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press).

Ethical Decision Making in Research

Although codes, policies, and principles are very important and useful, like any set of rules, they do not cover every situation, they often conflict, and they require interpretation. It is therefore important for researchers to learn how to interpret, assess, and apply various research rules and how to make decisions and act ethically in various situations. The vast majority of decisions involve the straightforward application of ethical rules. For example, consider the following case:

The research protocol for a study of a drug on hypertension requires the administration of the drug at different doses to 50 laboratory mice, with chemical and behavioral tests to determine toxic effects. Tom has almost finished the experiment for Dr. Q. He has only 5 mice left to test. However, he really wants to finish his work in time to go to Florida on spring break with his friends, who are leaving tonight. He has injected the drug in all 50 mice but has not completed all of the tests. He therefore decides to extrapolate from the 45 completed results to produce the 5 additional results.

Many different research ethics policies would hold that Tom has acted unethically by fabricating data. If this study were sponsored by a federal agency, such as the NIH, his actions would constitute a form of research misconduct , which the government defines as "fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism" (or FFP). Actions that nearly all researchers classify as unethical are viewed as misconduct. It is important to remember, however, that misconduct occurs only when researchers intend to deceive : honest errors related to sloppiness, poor record keeping, miscalculations, bias, self-deception, and even negligence do not constitute misconduct. Also, reasonable disagreements about research methods, procedures, and interpretations do not constitute research misconduct. Consider the following case:

Dr. T has just discovered a mathematical error in his paper that has been accepted for publication in a journal. The error does not affect the overall results of his research, but it is potentially misleading. The journal has just gone to press, so it is too late to catch the error before it appears in print. In order to avoid embarrassment, Dr. T decides to ignore the error.

Dr. T's error is not misconduct nor is his decision to take no action to correct the error. Most researchers, as well as many different policies and codes would say that Dr. T should tell the journal (and any coauthors) about the error and consider publishing a correction or errata. Failing to publish a correction would be unethical because it would violate norms relating to honesty and objectivity in research.

There are many other activities that the government does not define as "misconduct" but which are still regarded by most researchers as unethical. These are sometimes referred to as " other deviations " from acceptable research practices and include:

• Publishing the same paper in two different journals without telling the editors
• Submitting the same paper to different journals without telling the editors
• Not informing a collaborator of your intent to file a patent in order to make sure that you are the sole inventor
• Including a colleague as an author on a paper in return for a favor even though the colleague did not make a serious contribution to the paper
• Discussing with your colleagues confidential data from a paper that you are reviewing for a journal
• Using data, ideas, or methods you learn about while reviewing a grant or a papers without permission
• Trimming outliers from a data set without discussing your reasons in paper
• Using an inappropriate statistical technique in order to enhance the significance of your research
• Bypassing the peer review process and announcing your results through a press conference without giving peers adequate information to review your work
• Conducting a review of the literature that fails to acknowledge the contributions of other people in the field or relevant prior work
• Stretching the truth on a grant application in order to convince reviewers that your project will make a significant contribution to the field
• Stretching the truth on a job application or curriculum vita
• Giving the same research project to two graduate students in order to see who can do it the fastest
• Overworking, neglecting, or exploiting graduate or post-doctoral students
• Failing to keep good research records
• Failing to maintain research data for a reasonable period of time
• Making derogatory comments and personal attacks in your review of author's submission
• Promising a student a better grade for sexual favors
• Using a racist epithet in the laboratory
• Making significant deviations from the research protocol approved by your institution's Animal Care and Use Committee or Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research without telling the committee or the board
• Not reporting an adverse event in a human research experiment
• Wasting animals in research
• Exposing students and staff to biological risks in violation of your institution's biosafety rules
• Sabotaging someone's work
• Stealing supplies, books, or data
• Rigging an experiment so you know how it will turn out
• Making unauthorized copies of data, papers, or computer programs
• Owning over $10,000 in stock in a company that sponsors your research and not disclosing this financial interest
• Deliberately overestimating the clinical significance of a new drug in order to obtain economic benefits

These actions would be regarded as unethical by most scientists and some might even be illegal in some cases. Most of these would also violate different professional ethics codes or institutional policies. However, they do not fall into the narrow category of actions that the government classifies as research misconduct. Indeed, there has been considerable debate about the definition of "research misconduct" and many researchers and policy makers are not satisfied with the government's narrow definition that focuses on FFP. However, given the huge list of potential offenses that might fall into the category "other serious deviations," and the practical problems with defining and policing these other deviations, it is understandable why government officials have chosen to limit their focus.

Finally, situations frequently arise in research in which different people disagree about the proper course of action and there is no broad consensus about what should be done. In these situations, there may be good arguments on both sides of the issue and different ethical principles may conflict. These situations create difficult decisions for research known as ethical or moral dilemmas . Consider the following case:

Dr. Wexford is the principal investigator of a large, epidemiological study on the health of 10,000 agricultural workers. She has an impressive dataset that includes information on demographics, environmental exposures, diet, genetics, and various disease outcomes such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease (PD), and ALS. She has just published a paper on the relationship between pesticide exposure and PD in a prestigious journal. She is planning to publish many other papers from her dataset. She receives a request from another research team that wants access to her complete dataset. They are interested in examining the relationship between pesticide exposures and skin cancer. Dr. Wexford was planning to conduct a study on this topic.

Dr. Wexford faces a difficult choice. On the one hand, the ethical norm of openness obliges her to share data with the other research team. Her funding agency may also have rules that obligate her to share data. On the other hand, if she shares data with the other team, they may publish results that she was planning to publish, thus depriving her (and her team) of recognition and priority. It seems that there are good arguments on both sides of this issue and Dr. Wexford needs to take some time to think about what she should do. One possible option is to share data, provided that the investigators sign a data use agreement. The agreement could define allowable uses of the data, publication plans, authorship, etc. Another option would be to offer to collaborate with the researchers.

The following are some step that researchers, such as Dr. Wexford, can take to deal with ethical dilemmas in research:

What is the problem or issue?

It is always important to get a clear statement of the problem. In this case, the issue is whether to share information with the other research team.

What is the relevant information?

Many bad decisions are made as a result of poor information. To know what to do, Dr. Wexford needs to have more information concerning such matters as university or funding agency or journal policies that may apply to this situation, the team's intellectual property interests, the possibility of negotiating some kind of agreement with the other team, whether the other team also has some information it is willing to share, the impact of the potential publications, etc.

What are the different options?

People may fail to see different options due to a limited imagination, bias, ignorance, or fear. In this case, there may be other choices besides 'share' or 'don't share,' such as 'negotiate an agreement' or 'offer to collaborate with the researchers.'

How do ethical codes or policies as well as legal rules apply to these different options?

The university or funding agency may have policies on data management that apply to this case. Broader ethical rules, such as openness and respect for credit and intellectual property, may also apply to this case. Laws relating to intellectual property may be relevant.

Are there any people who can offer ethical advice?

It may be useful to seek advice from a colleague, a senior researcher, your department chair, an ethics or compliance officer, or anyone else you can trust. In the case, Dr. Wexford might want to talk to her supervisor and research team before making a decision.

After considering these questions, a person facing an ethical dilemma may decide to ask more questions, gather more information, explore different options, or consider other ethical rules. However, at some point he or she will have to make a decision and then take action. Ideally, a person who makes a decision in an ethical dilemma should be able to justify his or her decision to himself or herself, as well as colleagues, administrators, and other people who might be affected by the decision. He or she should be able to articulate reasons for his or her conduct and should consider the following questions in order to explain how he or she arrived at his or her decision:

• Which choice will probably have the best overall consequences for science and society?
• Which choice could stand up to further publicity and scrutiny?
• Which choice could you not live with?
• Think of the wisest person you know. What would he or she do in this situation?
• Which choice would be the most just, fair, or responsible?

After considering all of these questions, one still might find it difficult to decide what to do. If this is the case, then it may be appropriate to consider others ways of making the decision, such as going with a gut feeling or intuition, seeking guidance through prayer or meditation, or even flipping a coin. Endorsing these methods in this context need not imply that ethical decisions are irrational, however. The main point is that human reasoning plays a pivotal role in ethical decision-making but there are limits to its ability to solve all ethical dilemmas in a finite amount of time.

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Most academic institutions in the US require undergraduate, graduate, or postgraduate students to have some education in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) . The NIH and NSF have both mandated training in research ethics for students and trainees. Many academic institutions outside of the US have also developed educational curricula in research ethics

Those of you who are taking or have taken courses in research ethics may be wondering why you are required to have education in research ethics. You may believe that you are highly ethical and know the difference between right and wrong. You would never fabricate or falsify data or plagiarize. Indeed, you also may believe that most of your colleagues are highly ethical and that there is no ethics problem in research..

If you feel this way, relax. No one is accusing you of acting unethically. Indeed, the evidence produced so far shows that misconduct is a very rare occurrence in research, although there is considerable variation among various estimates. The rate of misconduct has been estimated to be as low as 0.01% of researchers per year (based on confirmed cases of misconduct in federally funded research) to as high as 1% of researchers per year (based on self-reports of misconduct on anonymous surveys). See Shamoo and Resnik (2015), cited above.

Clearly, it would be useful to have more data on this topic, but so far there is no evidence that science has become ethically corrupt, despite some highly publicized scandals. Even if misconduct is only a rare occurrence, it can still have a tremendous impact on science and society because it can compromise the integrity of research, erode the public’s trust in science, and waste time and resources. Will education in research ethics help reduce the rate of misconduct in science? It is too early to tell. The answer to this question depends, in part, on how one understands the causes of misconduct. There are two main theories about why researchers commit misconduct. According to the "bad apple" theory, most scientists are highly ethical. Only researchers who are morally corrupt, economically desperate, or psychologically disturbed commit misconduct. Moreover, only a fool would commit misconduct because science's peer review system and self-correcting mechanisms will eventually catch those who try to cheat the system. In any case, a course in research ethics will have little impact on "bad apples," one might argue.

According to the "stressful" or "imperfect" environment theory, misconduct occurs because various institutional pressures, incentives, and constraints encourage people to commit misconduct, such as pressures to publish or obtain grants or contracts, career ambitions, the pursuit of profit or fame, poor supervision of students and trainees, and poor oversight of researchers (see Shamoo and Resnik 2015). Moreover, defenders of the stressful environment theory point out that science's peer review system is far from perfect and that it is relatively easy to cheat the system. Erroneous or fraudulent research often enters the public record without being detected for years. Misconduct probably results from environmental and individual causes, i.e. when people who are morally weak, ignorant, or insensitive are placed in stressful or imperfect environments. In any case, a course in research ethics can be useful in helping to prevent deviations from norms even if it does not prevent misconduct. Education in research ethics is can help people get a better understanding of ethical standards, policies, and issues and improve ethical judgment and decision making. Many of the deviations that occur in research may occur because researchers simply do not know or have never thought seriously about some of the ethical norms of research. For example, some unethical authorship practices probably reflect traditions and practices that have not been questioned seriously until recently. If the director of a lab is named as an author on every paper that comes from his lab, even if he does not make a significant contribution, what could be wrong with that? That's just the way it's done, one might argue. Another example where there may be some ignorance or mistaken traditions is conflicts of interest in research. A researcher may think that a "normal" or "traditional" financial relationship, such as accepting stock or a consulting fee from a drug company that sponsors her research, raises no serious ethical issues. Or perhaps a university administrator sees no ethical problem in taking a large gift with strings attached from a pharmaceutical company. Maybe a physician thinks that it is perfectly appropriate to receive a $300 finder’s fee for referring patients into a clinical trial.

If "deviations" from ethical conduct occur in research as a result of ignorance or a failure to reflect critically on problematic traditions, then a course in research ethics may help reduce the rate of serious deviations by improving the researcher's understanding of ethics and by sensitizing him or her to the issues.

Finally, education in research ethics should be able to help researchers grapple with the ethical dilemmas they are likely to encounter by introducing them to important concepts, tools, principles, and methods that can be useful in resolving these dilemmas. Scientists must deal with a number of different controversial topics, such as human embryonic stem cell research, cloning, genetic engineering, and research involving animal or human subjects, which require ethical reflection and deliberation.

Research Ethics & Ethical Considerations

A Plain-Language Explainer With Examples

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Reviewers: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | May 2024

Research ethics are one of those “ unsexy but essential ” subjects that you need to fully understand (and apply) to conquer your dissertation, thesis or research paper. In this post, we’ll unpack research ethics using plain language and loads of examples .

Overview: Research Ethics 101

• What are research ethics?
• Why should you care?
• Research ethics principles
• Respect for persons
• Beneficence
• Objectivity
• Key takeaways

What (exactly) are research ethics?

At the simplest level, research ethics are a set of principles that ensure that your study is conducted responsibly, safely, and with integrity. More specifically, research ethics help protect the rights and welfare of your research participants, while also ensuring the credibility of your research findings.

Research ethics are critically important for a number of reasons:

Firstly, they’re a complete non-negotiable when it comes to getting your research proposal approved. Pretty much all universities will have a set of ethical criteria that student projects need to adhere to – and these are typically very strictly enforced. So, if your proposed study doesn’t tick the necessary ethical boxes, it won’t be approved .

Beyond the practical aspect of approval, research ethics are essential as they ensure that your study’s participants (whether human or animal) are properly protected . In turn, this fosters trust between you and your participants – as well as trust between researchers and the public more generally. As you can probably imagine, it wouldn’t be good if the general public had a negative perception of researchers!

Last but not least, research ethics help ensure that your study’s results are valid and reliable . In other words, that you measured the thing you intended to measure – and that other researchers can repeat your study. If you’re not familiar with the concepts of reliability and validity , we’ve got a straightforward explainer video covering that below.

The Core Principles

In practical terms, each university or institution will have its own ethics policy – so, what exactly constitutes “ethical research” will vary somewhat between institutions and countries. Nevertheless, there are a handful of core principles that shape ethics policies. These principles include:

Let’s unpack each of these to make them a little more tangible.

Ethics Principle 1: Respect for persons

As the name suggests, this principle is all about ensuring that your participants are treated fairly and respectfully . In practical terms, this means informed consent – in other words, participants should be fully informed about the nature of the research, as well as any potential risks. Additionally, they should be able to withdraw from the study at any time. This is especially important when you’re dealing with vulnerable populations – for example, children, the elderly or people with cognitive disabilities.

Another dimension of the “respect for persons” principle is confidentiality and data protection . In other words, your participants’ personal information should be kept strictly confidential and secure at all times. Depending on the specifics of your project, this might also involve anonymising or masking people’s identities. As mentioned earlier, the exact requirements will vary between universities, so be sure to thoroughly review your institution’s ethics policy before you start designing your project.

Need a helping hand?

Ethics Principle 2: Beneficence

This principle is a little more opaque, but in simple terms beneficence means that you, as the researcher, should aim to maximise the benefits of your work, while minimising any potential harm to your participants.

In practical terms, benefits could include advancing knowledge, improving health outcomes, or providing educational value. Conversely, potential harms could include:

• Physical harm from accidents or injuries
• Psychological harm, such as stress or embarrassment
• Social harm, such as stigmatisation or loss of reputation
• Economic harm – in other words, financial costs or lost income

Simply put, the beneficence principle means that researchers must always try to identify potential risks and take suitable measures to reduce or eliminate them.

Ethics Principle 3: Objectivity

As you can probably guess, this principle is all about attempting to minimise research bias to the greatest degree possible. In other words, you’ll need to reduce subjectivity and increase objectivity wherever possible.

In practical terms, this principle has the largest impact on the methodology of your study – specifically the data collection and data analysis aspects. For example, you’ll need to ensure that the selection of your participants (in other words, your sampling strategy ) is aligned with your research aims – and that your sample isn’t skewed in a way that supports your presuppositions.

If you’re keen to learn more about research bias and the various ways in which you could unintentionally skew your results, check out the video below.

Ethics Principle 4: Integrity

Again, no surprises here; this principle is all about producing “honest work” . It goes without saying that researchers should always conduct their work honestly and transparently, report their findings accurately, and disclose any potential conflicts of interest upfront.

This is all pretty obvious, but another aspect of the integrity principle that’s sometimes overlooked is respect for intellectual property . In practical terms, this means you need to honour any patents, copyrights, or other forms of intellectual property that you utilise while undertaking your research. Along the same vein, you shouldn’t use any unpublished data, methods, or results without explicit, written permission from the respective owner.

Linked to all of this is the broader issue of plagiarism . Needless to say, if you’re drawing on someone else’s published work, be sure to cite your sources, in the correct format. To make life easier, use a reference manager such as Mendeley or Zotero to ensure that your citations and reference list are perfectly polished.

FAQs: Research Ethics

Research ethics & ethical considertation, what is informed consent.

Informed consent simply means providing your potential participants with all necessary information about the study. This should include information regarding the study’s purpose, procedures, risks, and benefits. This information allows your potential participants to make a voluntary and informed decision about whether to participate.

How should I obtain consent from non-English speaking participants?

What about animals.

When conducting research with animals, ensure you adhere to ethical guidelines for the humane treatment of animals. Again, the exact requirements here will vary between institutions, but typically include minimising pain and distress, using alternatives where possible, and obtaining approval from an animal care and use committee.

What is the role of the ERB or IRB?

An ethics review board (ERB) or institutional review board (IRB) evaluates research proposals to ensure they meet ethical standards. The board reviews study designs, consent forms, and data handling procedures, to protect participants’ welfare and rights.

How can I obtain ethical approval for my project?

This varies between universities, but you will typically need to submit a detailed research proposal to your institution’s ethics committee. This proposal should include your research objectives, methods, and how you plan to address ethical considerations like informed consent, confidentiality, and risk minimisation. You can learn more about how to write a proposal here .

How do I ensure ethical collaboration when working with colleagues?

Collaborative research should be conducted with mutual respect and clear agreements on roles, contributions, and publication credits. Open communication is key to preventing conflicts and misunderstandings. Also, be sure to check whether your university has any specific requirements with regards to collaborative efforts and division of labour. 

How should I address ethical concerns relating to my funding source?

Key takeaways: research ethics 101.

Here’s a quick recap of the key points we’ve covered:

• Research ethics are a set of principles that ensure that your study is conducted responsibly.
• It’s essential that you design your study around these principles, or it simply won’t get approved.
• The four ethics principles we looked at are: respect for persons, beneficence, objectivity and integrity

As mentioned, the exact requirements will vary slightly depending on the institution and country, so be sure to thoroughly review your university’s research ethics policy before you start developing your study.

Psst... there’s more!

This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

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Home » Ethical Considerations – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

Ethical Considerations – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Ethical Considerations

Ethical considerations in research refer to the principles and guidelines that researchers must follow to ensure that their studies are conducted in an ethical and responsible manner. These considerations are designed to protect the rights, safety, and well-being of research participants, as well as the integrity and credibility of the research itself

Some of the key ethical considerations in research include:

• Informed consent: Researchers must obtain informed consent from study participants, which means they must inform participants about the study’s purpose, procedures, risks, benefits, and their right to withdraw at any time.
• Privacy and confidentiality : Researchers must ensure that participants’ privacy and confidentiality are protected. This means that personal information should be kept confidential and not shared without the participant’s consent.
• Harm reduction : Researchers must ensure that the study does not harm the participants physically or psychologically. They must take steps to minimize the risks associated with the study.
• Fairness and equity : Researchers must ensure that the study does not discriminate against any particular group or individual. They should treat all participants equally and fairly.
• Use of deception: Researchers must use deception only if it is necessary to achieve the study’s objectives. They must inform participants of the deception as soon as possible.
• Use of vulnerable populations : Researchers must be especially cautious when working with vulnerable populations, such as children, pregnant women, prisoners, and individuals with cognitive or intellectual disabilities.
• Conflict of interest : Researchers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest that may affect the study’s integrity. This includes financial or personal relationships that could influence the study’s results.
• Data manipulation: Researchers must not manipulate data to support a particular hypothesis or agenda. They should report the results of the study objectively, even if the findings are not consistent with their expectations.
• Intellectual property: Researchers must respect intellectual property rights and give credit to previous studies and research.
• Cultural sensitivity : Researchers must be sensitive to the cultural norms and beliefs of the participants. They should avoid imposing their values and beliefs on the participants and should be respectful of their cultural practices.

Types of Ethical Considerations

Types of Ethical Considerations are as follows:

Research Ethics:

This includes ethical principles and guidelines that govern research involving human or animal subjects, ensuring that the research is conducted in an ethical and responsible manner.

Business Ethics :

This refers to ethical principles and standards that guide business practices and decision-making, such as transparency, honesty, fairness, and social responsibility.

Medical Ethics :

This refers to ethical principles and standards that govern the practice of medicine, including the duty to protect patient autonomy, informed consent, confidentiality, and non-maleficence.

Environmental Ethics :

This involves ethical principles and values that guide our interactions with the natural world, including the obligation to protect the environment, minimize harm, and promote sustainability.

Legal Ethics

This involves ethical principles and standards that guide the conduct of legal professionals, including issues such as confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and professional competence.

Social Ethics

This involves ethical principles and values that guide our interactions with other individuals and society as a whole, including issues such as justice, fairness, and human rights.

Information Ethics

This involves ethical principles and values that govern the use and dissemination of information, including issues such as privacy, accuracy, and intellectual property.

Cultural Ethics

This involves ethical principles and values that govern the relationship between different cultures and communities, including issues such as respect for diversity, cultural sensitivity, and inclusivity.

Technological Ethics

This refers to ethical principles and guidelines that govern the development, use, and impact of technology, including issues such as privacy, security, and social responsibility.

Journalism Ethics

This involves ethical principles and standards that guide the practice of journalism, including issues such as accuracy, fairness, and the public interest.

Educational Ethics

This refers to ethical principles and standards that guide the practice of education, including issues such as academic integrity, fairness, and respect for diversity.

Political Ethics

This involves ethical principles and values that guide political decision-making and behavior, including issues such as accountability, transparency, and the protection of civil liberties.

Professional Ethics

This refers to ethical principles and standards that guide the conduct of professionals in various fields, including issues such as honesty, integrity, and competence.

Personal Ethics

This involves ethical principles and values that guide individual behavior and decision-making, including issues such as personal responsibility, honesty, and respect for others.

Global Ethics

This involves ethical principles and values that guide our interactions with other nations and the global community, including issues such as human rights, environmental protection, and social justice.

Applications of Ethical Considerations

Ethical considerations are important in many areas of society, including medicine, business, law, and technology. Here are some specific applications of ethical considerations:

• Medical research : Ethical considerations are crucial in medical research, particularly when human subjects are involved. Researchers must ensure that their studies are conducted in a way that does not harm participants and that participants give informed consent before participating.
• Business practices: Ethical considerations are also important in business, where companies must make decisions that are socially responsible and avoid activities that are harmful to society. For example, companies must ensure that their products are safe for consumers and that they do not engage in exploitative labor practices.
• Environmental protection: Ethical considerations play a crucial role in environmental protection, as companies and governments must weigh the benefits of economic development against the potential harm to the environment. Decisions about land use, resource allocation, and pollution must be made in an ethical manner that takes into account the long-term consequences for the planet and future generations.
• Technology development : As technology continues to advance rapidly, ethical considerations become increasingly important in areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and genetic engineering. Developers must ensure that their creations do not harm humans or the environment and that they are developed in a way that is fair and equitable.
• Legal system : The legal system relies on ethical considerations to ensure that justice is served and that individuals are treated fairly. Lawyers and judges must abide by ethical standards to maintain the integrity of the legal system and to protect the rights of all individuals involved.

Examples of Ethical Considerations

Here are a few examples of ethical considerations in different contexts:

• In healthcare : A doctor must ensure that they provide the best possible care to their patients and avoid causing them harm. They must respect the autonomy of their patients, and obtain informed consent before administering any treatment or procedure. They must also ensure that they maintain patient confidentiality and avoid any conflicts of interest.
• In the workplace: An employer must ensure that they treat their employees fairly and with respect, provide them with a safe working environment, and pay them a fair wage. They must also avoid any discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or any other characteristic protected by law.
• In the media : Journalists must ensure that they report the news accurately and without bias. They must respect the privacy of individuals and avoid causing harm or distress. They must also be transparent about their sources and avoid any conflicts of interest.
• In research: Researchers must ensure that they conduct their studies ethically and with integrity. They must obtain informed consent from participants, protect their privacy, and avoid any harm or discomfort. They must also ensure that their findings are reported accurately and without bias.
• In personal relationships : People must ensure that they treat others with respect and kindness, and avoid causing harm or distress. They must respect the autonomy of others and avoid any actions that would be considered unethical, such as lying or cheating. They must also respect the confidentiality of others and maintain their privacy.

How to Write Ethical Considerations

When writing about research involving human subjects or animals, it is essential to include ethical considerations to ensure that the study is conducted in a manner that is morally responsible and in accordance with professional standards. Here are some steps to help you write ethical considerations:

• Describe the ethical principles: Start by explaining the ethical principles that will guide the research. These could include principles such as respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.
• Discuss informed consent : Informed consent is a critical ethical consideration when conducting research. Explain how you will obtain informed consent from participants, including how you will explain the purpose of the study, potential risks and benefits, and how you will protect their privacy.
• Address confidentiality : Describe how you will protect the confidentiality of the participants’ personal information and data, including any measures you will take to ensure that the data is kept secure and confidential.
• Consider potential risks and benefits : Describe any potential risks or harms to participants that could result from the study and how you will minimize those risks. Also, discuss the potential benefits of the study, both to the participants and to society.
• Discuss the use of animals : If the research involves the use of animals, address the ethical considerations related to animal welfare. Explain how you will minimize any potential harm to the animals and ensure that they are treated ethically.
• Mention the ethical approval : Finally, it’s essential to acknowledge that the research has received ethical approval from the relevant institutional review board or ethics committee. State the name of the committee, the date of approval, and any specific conditions or requirements that were imposed.

When to Write Ethical Considerations

Ethical considerations should be written whenever research involves human subjects or has the potential to impact human beings, animals, or the environment in some way. Ethical considerations are also important when research involves sensitive topics, such as mental health, sexuality, or religion.

In general, ethical considerations should be an integral part of any research project, regardless of the field or subject matter. This means that they should be considered at every stage of the research process, from the initial planning and design phase to data collection, analysis, and dissemination.

Ethical considerations should also be written in accordance with the guidelines and standards set by the relevant regulatory bodies and professional associations. These guidelines may vary depending on the discipline, so it is important to be familiar with the specific requirements of your field.

Purpose of Ethical Considerations

Ethical considerations are an essential aspect of many areas of life, including business, healthcare, research, and social interactions. The primary purposes of ethical considerations are:

• Protection of human rights: Ethical considerations help ensure that people’s rights are respected and protected. This includes respecting their autonomy, ensuring their privacy is respected, and ensuring that they are not subjected to harm or exploitation.
• Promoting fairness and justice: Ethical considerations help ensure that people are treated fairly and justly, without discrimination or bias. This includes ensuring that everyone has equal access to resources and opportunities, and that decisions are made based on merit rather than personal biases or prejudices.
• Promoting honesty and transparency : Ethical considerations help ensure that people are truthful and transparent in their actions and decisions. This includes being open and honest about conflicts of interest, disclosing potential risks, and communicating clearly with others.
• Maintaining public trust: Ethical considerations help maintain public trust in institutions and individuals. This is important for building and maintaining relationships with customers, patients, colleagues, and other stakeholders.
• Ensuring responsible conduct: Ethical considerations help ensure that people act responsibly and are accountable for their actions. This includes adhering to professional standards and codes of conduct, following laws and regulations, and avoiding behaviors that could harm others or damage the environment.

Advantages of Ethical Considerations

Here are some of the advantages of ethical considerations:

• Builds Trust : When individuals or organizations follow ethical considerations, it creates a sense of trust among stakeholders, including customers, clients, and employees. This trust can lead to stronger relationships and long-term loyalty.
• Reputation and Brand Image : Ethical considerations are often linked to a company’s brand image and reputation. By following ethical practices, a company can establish a positive image and reputation that can enhance its brand value.
• Avoids Legal Issues: Ethical considerations can help individuals and organizations avoid legal issues and penalties. By adhering to ethical principles, companies can reduce the risk of facing lawsuits, regulatory investigations, and fines.
• Increases Employee Retention and Motivation: Employees tend to be more satisfied and motivated when they work for an organization that values ethics. Companies that prioritize ethical considerations tend to have higher employee retention rates, leading to lower recruitment costs.
• Enhances Decision-making: Ethical considerations help individuals and organizations make better decisions. By considering the ethical implications of their actions, decision-makers can evaluate the potential consequences and choose the best course of action.
• Positive Impact on Society: Ethical considerations have a positive impact on society as a whole. By following ethical practices, companies can contribute to social and environmental causes, leading to a more sustainable and equitable society.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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6.3 Principles of Research Ethics

There are general ethical principles that guide and underpin the proper conduct of research. The term “ethical principles” refers to those general rules that operate as a foundational rationale for the numerous specific ethical guidelines and assessments of human behaviour. 7 The National Statement on ‘ethical conduct in human research’ states that ethical behaviour entails acting with integrity, motivated by a deep respect and concern for others. 8 Before research can be conducted, it is essential for researchers to develop and submit to a relevant human research ethics committee a research proposal that meets the National Statement’s requirements and is ethically acceptable. There are five key ethical research principles – respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice 8, 9 (Figure 6.1). These principles are universal, which means they apply everywhere in the world, without national, cultural, legal, or economic boundaries. Therefore, everyone involved in human research studies should understand and follow these principles.

Research merit and integrity

Research merit and integrity relate to the quality or value of a study in contributing to the knowledge base of a particular field or discipline. 8,9 This is determined by the originality and significance of the research question, the soundness and appropriateness of the research methodology, the rigor and reliability of the data analysis, the clarity and coherence of the research findings, and the potential impact of the research on advancing knowledge or solving practical problems. Research must be developed with methods that are appropriate to the study’s objectives, based on a thorough analysis of the relevant literature, and conducted using facilities and resources that are appropriate for the study’s needs. In essence, research must adhere to recognised standards of integrity and be designed, reviewed and conducted in a manner that ensures quality and transparency. 8 Examples of unacceptable practices include plagiarism through appropriation or use of the ideas or intellectual property of others; falsification by creating false data or other aspects of research (including documentation and consent of participants); distortion through improper manipulation and/or selection of data, images and/or consent.

Respect for persons

Respect for humans is an acknowledgement of their inherent worth, and it refers to the moral imperative to regard the autonomy of others. 8,10 Respect entails taking into account the well-being, beliefs, perspectives, practises, and cultural heritage of persons participating in research, individually and collectively. It involves respecting the participants’ privacy, confidentiality, and cultural sensitivity. 8 Respect also entails giving adequate consideration to people to make their judgements throughout the study process. In cases where the participants have limited capacity to make autonomous decisions, respect for them entails protecting them against harm. 8 This means that all participants in research must participate voluntarily without coercion or undue influence, and their rights, dignity and autonomy should be respected and adequately protected.

Beneficence

The ethical principle that requires actions that promote the well-being and interests of others is known as beneficence. 10 It is the fundamental premise underlying all medical health care and research. 8 Beneficence requires the researcher to weigh the prospective benefits and hazards and make certain that projects have the potential for net benefit over harm. 8,10 Researchers are responsible for: (a) structuring the study to minimise the risks of injury or discomfort to participants; (b) explaining the possible benefits and dangers of the research to participants; and (c) the welfare of the participants in the research setting 8. Thus, the study participants must always be prioritised over the research methodology, even if this means invalidating data. 8

Non-maleficence

This is the ethical principle that requires actions that avoid or minimize harm to others. According to the principle of non-maleficence, participating in a study shouldn’t do any harm to the research subject. This principle is closely related to beneficence; however, it may be difficult to keep track of any damage to study participants. 11 Different types of harm could occur, including physical, mental, social, or financial harm. While the physical injury may be quickly recognised and then avoided or reduced, less evident issues such as emotional, social, and economic factors might hurt the subject without the researcher being aware. 11 It is essential to note that all research involve cost to participants even if just their time, and each research study has the potential to hurt participants, hence it is important to ensure that the merit of research outweighs the costs and risks. There are five categories into which studies may be categorised based on the possible amount of injury or discomfort that they may expose the participants to. 11

• No anticipated effects
• Temporary discomfort
• Unusual levels of temporary discomfort
• Risk of permanent damage
• Certainty of permanent damage

The concept of fairness and the application of moral principles to ensure equitable treatment. According to this research tenet, the researcher must treat participants fairly and always prioritise the needs of the research subjects over the study’s aim. 8,11 Research participants must be fairly chosen, and that exclusion and inclusion criteria must be accurately stated in the research’s findings. 8 In addition, there is no unjust hardship associated with participating in research on certain groups, and the participant recruitment method is fair. Furthermore, the rewards for research involvement are fairly distributed; research participants are not exploited, and research rewards are accessible to everybody equally. 8

An Introduction to Research Methods for Undergraduate Health Profession Students Copyright © 2023 by Faith Alele and Bunmi Malau-Aduli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Ethical Issues in Research: Perceptions of Researchers, Research Ethics Board Members and Research Ethics Experts

Marie-josée drolet.

1 Department of Occupational Therapy (OT), Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), Trois-Rivières (Québec), Canada

Eugénie Rose-Derouin

2 Bachelor OT program, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), Trois-Rivières (Québec), Canada

Julie-Claude Leblanc

Mélanie ruest, bryn williams-jones.

3 Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health, Université de Montréal, Montréal (Québec), Canada

In the context of academic research, a diversity of ethical issues, conditioned by the different roles of members within these institutions, arise. Previous studies on this topic addressed mainly the perceptions of researchers. However, to our knowledge, no studies have explored the transversal ethical issues from a wider spectrum, including other members of academic institutions as the research ethics board (REB) members, and the research ethics experts. The present study used a descriptive phenomenological approach to document the ethical issues experienced by a heterogeneous group of Canadian researchers, REB members, and research ethics experts. Data collection involved socio-demographic questionnaires and individual semi-structured interviews. Following the triangulation of different perspectives (researchers, REB members and ethics experts), emerging ethical issues were synthesized in ten units of meaning: (1) research integrity, (2) conflicts of interest, (3) respect for research participants, (4) lack of supervision and power imbalances, (5) individualism and performance, (6) inadequate ethical guidance, (7) social injustices, (8) distributive injustices, (9) epistemic injustices, and (10) ethical distress. This study highlighted several problematic elements that can support the identification of future solutions to resolve transversal ethical issues in research that affect the heterogeneous members of the academic community.

Introduction

Research includes a set of activities in which researchers use various structured methods to contribute to the development of knowledge, whether this knowledge is theoretical, fundamental, or applied (Drolet & Ruest, accepted ). University research is carried out in a highly competitive environment that is characterized by ever-increasing demands (i.e., on time, productivity), insufficient access to research funds, and within a market economy that values productivity and speed often to the detriment of quality or rigour – this research context creates a perfect recipe for breaches in research ethics, like research misbehaviour or misconduct (i.e., conduct that is ethically questionable or unacceptable because it contravenes the accepted norms of responsible conduct of research or compromises the respect of core ethical values that are widely held by the research community) (Drolet & Girard, 2020 ; Sieber, 2004 ). Problematic ethics and integrity issues – e.g., conflicts of interest, falsification of data, non-respect of participants’ rights, and plagiarism, to name but a few – have the potential to both undermine the credibility of research and lead to negative consequences for many stakeholders, including researchers, research assistants and personnel, research participants, academic institutions, and society as a whole (Drolet & Girard, 2020 ). It is thus evident that the academic community should be able to identify these different ethical issues in order to evaluate the nature of the risks that they pose (and for whom), and then work towards their prevention or management (i.e., education, enhanced policies and procedures, risk mitigation strategies).

In this article, we define an “ethical issue” as any situation that may compromise, in whole or in part, the respect of at least one moral value (Swisher et al., 2005 ) that is considered socially legitimate and should thus be respected. In general, ethical issues occur at three key moments or stages of the research process: (1) research design (i.e., conception, project planning), (2) research conduct (i.e., data collection, data analysis) and (3) knowledge translation or communication (e.g., publications of results, conferences, press releases) (Drolet & Ruest, accepted ). According to Sieber ( 2004 ), ethical issues in research can be classified into five categories, related to: (a) communication with participants and the community, (b) acquisition and use of research data, (c) external influence on research, (d) risks and benefits of the research, and (e) selection and use of research theories and methods. Many of these issues are related to breaches of research ethics norms, misbehaviour or research misconduct. Bruhn et al., ( 2002 ) developed a typology of misbehaviour and misconduct in academia that can be used to judge the seriousness of different cases. This typology takes into consideration two axes of reflection: (a) the origin of the situation (i.e., is it the researcher’s own fault or due to the organizational context?), and (b) the scope and severity (i.e., is this the first instance or a recurrent behaviour? What is the nature of the situation? What are the consequences, for whom, for how many people, and for which organizations?).

A previous detailed review of the international literature on ethical issues in research revealed several interesting findings (Beauchemin et al., 2021 ). Indeed, the current literature is dominated by descriptive ethics, i.e., the sharing by researchers from various disciplines of the ethical issues they have personally experienced. While such anecdotal documentation is relevant, it is insufficient because it does not provide a global view of the situation. Among the reviewed literature, empirical studies were in the minority (Table  1 ) – only about one fifth of the sample (n = 19) presented empirical research findings on ethical issues in research. The first of these studies was conducted almost 50 years ago (Hunt et al., 1984 ), with the remainder conducted in the 1990s. Eight studies were conducted in the United States (n = 8), five in Canada (n = 5), three in England (n = 3), two in Sweden (n = 2) and one in Ghana (n = 1).

Summary of Empirical Studies on Ethical Issues in Research by the year of publication

Further, the majority of studies in our sample (n = 12) collected the perceptions of a homogeneous group of participants, usually researchers (n = 14) and sometimes health professionals (n = 6). A minority of studies (n = 7) triangulated the perceptions of diverse research stakeholders (i.e., researchers and research participants, or students). To our knowledge, only one study has examined perceptions of ethical issues in research by research ethics board members (REB; Institutional Review Boards [IRB] in the USA), and none to date have documented the perceptions of research ethics experts. Finally, nine studies (n = 9) adopted a qualitative design, seven studies (n = 7) a quantitative design, and three (n = 3) a mixed-methods design.

More studies using empirical research methods are needed to better identify broader trends, to enrich discussions on the values that should govern responsible conduct of research in the academic community, and to evaluate the means by which these values can be supported in practice (Bahn, 2012 ; Beauchemin et al., 2021 ; Bruhn et al., 2002 ; Henderson et al., 2013 ; Resnik & Elliot, 2016; Sieber 2004 ). To this end, we conducted an empirical qualitative study to document the perceptions and experiences of a heterogeneous group of Canadian researchers, REB members, and research ethics experts, to answer the following broad question: What are the ethical issues in research?

Research Methods

Research design.

A qualitative research approach involving individual semi-structured interviews was used to systematically document ethical issues (De Poy & Gitlin, 2010 ; Hammell et al., 2000 ). Specifically, a descriptive phenomenological approach inspired by the philosophy of Husserl was used (Husserl, 1970 , 1999 ), as it is recommended for documenting the perceptions of ethical issues raised by various practices (Hunt & Carnavale, 2011 ).

Ethical considerations

The principal investigator obtained ethics approval for this project from the Research Ethics Board of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR). All members of the research team signed a confidentiality agreement, and research participants signed the consent form after reading an information letter explaining the nature of the research project.

Sampling and recruitment

As indicated above, three types of participants were sought: (1) researchers from different academic disciplines conducting research (i.e., theoretical, fundamental or empirical) in Canadian universities; (2) REB members working in Canadian organizations responsible for the ethical review, oversight or regulation of research; and (3) research ethics experts, i.e., academics or ethicists who teach research ethics, conduct research in research ethics, or are scholars who have acquired a specialization in research ethics. To be included in the study, participants had to work in Canada, speak and understand English or French, and be willing to participate in the study. Following Thomas and Polio’s (2002) recommendation to recruit between six and twelve participants (for a homogeneous sample) to ensure data saturation, for our heterogeneous sample, we aimed to recruit approximately twelve participants in order to obtain data saturation. Having used this method several times in related projects in professional ethics, data saturation is usually achieved with 10 to 15 participants (Drolet & Goulet, 2018 ; Drolet & Girard, 2020 ; Drolet et al., 2020 ). From experience, larger samples only serve to increase the degree of data saturation, especially in heterogeneous samples (Drolet et al., 2017 , 2019 ; Drolet & Maclure, 2016 ).

Purposive sampling facilitated the identification of participants relevant to documenting the phenomenon in question (Fortin, 2010 ). To ensure a rich and most complete representation of perceptions, we sought participants with varied and complementary characteristics with regards to the social roles they occupy in research practice (Drolet & Girard, 2020 ). A triangulation of sources was used for the recruitment (Bogdan & Biklen, 2006 ). The websites of Canadian universities and Canadian health institution REBs, as well as those of major Canadian granting agencies (i.e., the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Fonds de recherche du Quebec), were searched to identify individuals who might be interested in participating in the study. Further, people known by the research team for their knowledge and sensitivity to ethical issues in research were asked to participate. Research participants were also asked to suggest other individuals who met the study criteria.

Data Collection

Two tools were used for data collecton: (a) a socio-demographic questionnaire, and (b) a semi-structured individual interview guide. English and French versions of these two documents were used and made available, depending on participant preferences. In addition, although the interview guide contained the same questions, they were adapted to participants’ specific roles (i.e., researcher, REB member, research ethics expert). When contacted by email by the research assistant, participants were asked to confirm under which role they wished to participate (because some participants might have multiple, overlapping responsibilities) and they were sent the appropriate interview guide.

The interview guides each had two parts: an introduction and a section on ethical issues. The introduction consisted of general questions to put the participant at ease (i.e., “Tell me what a typical day at work is like for you”). The section on ethical issues was designed to capture the participant’s perceptions through questions such as: “Tell me three stories you have experienced at work that involve an ethical issue?” and “Do you feel that your organization is doing enough to address, manage, and resolve ethical issues in your work?”. Although some interviews were conducted in person, the majority were conducted by videoconference to promote accessibility and because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviews were digitally recorded so that the verbatim could be transcribed in full, and varied between 40 and 120 min in duration, with an average of 90 min. Research assistants conducted the interviews and transcribed the verbatim.

Data Analysis

The socio-demographic questionnaires were subjected to simple descriptive statistical analyses (i.e., means and totals), and the semi-structured interviews were subjected to qualitative analysis. The steps proposed by Giorgi ( 1997 ) for a Husserlian phenomenological reduction of the data were used. After collecting, recording, and transcribing the interviews, all verbatim were analyzed by at least two analysts: a research assistant (2nd author of this article) and the principal investigator (1st author) or a postdoctoral fellow (3rd author). The repeated reading of the verbatim allowed the first analyst to write a synopsis, i.e., an initial extraction of units of meaning. The second analyst then read the synopses, which were commented and improved if necessary. Agreement between analysts allowed the final drafting of the interview synopses, which were then analyzed by three analysts to generate and organize the units of meaning that emerged from the qualitative data.

Participants

Sixteen individuals (n = 16) participated in the study, of whom nine (9) identified as female and seven (7) as male (Table  2 ). Participants ranged in age from 22 to 72 years, with a mean age of 47.5 years. Participants had between one (1) and 26 years of experience in the research setting, with an average of 14.3 years of experience. Participants held a variety of roles, including: REB members (n = 11), researchers (n = 10), research ethics experts (n = 4), and research assistant (n = 1). As mentioned previously, seven (7) participants held more than one role, i.e., REB member, research ethics expert, and researcher. The majority (87.5%) of participants were working in Quebec, with the remaining working in other Canadian provinces. Although all participants considered themselves to be francophone, one quarter (n = 4) identified themselves as belonging to a cultural minority group.

Description of Participants

With respect to their academic background, most participants (n = 9) had a PhD, three (3) had a post-doctorate, two (2) had a master’s degree, and two (2) had a bachelor’s degree. Participants came from a variety of disciplines: nine (9) had a specialty in the humanities or social sciences, four (4) in the health sciences and three (3) in the natural sciences. In terms of their knowledge of ethics, five (5) participants reported having taken one university course entirely dedicated to ethics, four (4) reported having taken several university courses entirely dedicated to ethics, three (3) had a university degree dedicated to ethics, while two (2) only had a few hours or days of training in ethics and two (2) reported having no knowledge of ethics.

Ethical issues

As Fig.  1 illustrates, ten units of meaning emerge from the data analysis, namely: (1) research integrity, (2) conflicts of interest, (3) respect for research participants, (4) lack of supervision and power imbalances, (5) individualism and performance, (6) inadequate ethical guidance, (7) social injustices, (8) distributive injustices, (9) epistemic injustices, and (10) ethical distress. To illustrate the results, excerpts from verbatim interviews are presented in the following sub-sections. Most of the excerpts have been translated into English as the majority of interviews were conducted with French-speaking participants.

Ethical issues in research according to the participants

Research Integrity

The research environment is highly competitive and performance-based. Several participants, in particular researchers and research ethics experts, felt that this environment can lead both researchers and research teams to engage in unethical behaviour that reflects a lack of research integrity. For example, as some participants indicated, competition for grants and scientific publications is sometimes so intense that researchers falsify research results or plagiarize from colleagues to achieve their goals.

Some people will lie or exaggerate their research findings in order to get funding. Then, you see it afterwards, you realize: “ah well, it didn’t work, but they exaggerated what they found and what they did” (participant 14). Another problem in research is the identification of authors when there is a publication. Very often, there are authors who don’t even know what the publication is about and that their name is on it. (…) The time that it surprised me the most was just a few months ago when I saw someone I knew who applied for a teaching position. He got it I was super happy for him. Then I looked at his publications and … there was one that caught my attention much more than the others, because I was in it and I didn’t know what that publication was. I was the second author of a publication that I had never read (participant 14). I saw a colleague who had plagiarized another colleague. [When the colleague] found out about it, he complained. So, plagiarism is a serious [ethical breach]. I would also say that there is a certain amount of competition in the university faculties, especially for grants (…). There are people who want to win at all costs or get as much as possible. They are not necessarily going to consider their colleagues. They don’t have much of a collegial spirit (participant 10).

These examples of research misbehaviour or misconduct are sometimes due to or associated with situations of conflicts of interest, which may be poorly managed by certain researchers or research teams, as noted by many participants.

Conflict of interest

The actors and institutions involved in research have diverse interests, like all humans and institutions. As noted in Chap. 7 of the Canadian Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS2, 2018),

“researchers and research students hold trust relationships, either directly or indirectly, with participants, research sponsors, institutions, their professional bodies and society. These trust relationships can be put at risk by conflicts of interest that may compromise independence, objectivity or ethical duties of loyalty. Although the potential for such conflicts has always existed, pressures on researchers (i.e., to delay or withhold dissemination of research outcomes or to use inappropriate recruitment strategies) heighten concerns that conflicts of interest may affect ethical behaviour” (p. 92).

The sources of these conflicts are varied and can include interpersonal conflicts, financial partnerships, third-party pressures, academic or economic interests, a researcher holding multiple roles within an institution, or any other incentive that may compromise a researcher’s independence, integrity, and neutrality (TCPS2, 2018). While it is not possible to eliminate all conflicts of interest, it is important to manage them properly and to avoid temptations to behave unethically.

Ethical temptations correspond to situations in which people are tempted to prioritize their own interests to the detriment of the ethical goods that should, in their own context, govern their actions (Swisher et al., 2005 ). In the case of researchers, this refers to situations that undermine independence, integrity, neutrality, or even the set of principles that govern research ethics (TCPS2, 2018) or the responsible conduct of research. According to study participants, these types of ethical issues frequently occur in research. Many participants, especially researchers and REB members, reported that conflicts of interest can arise when members of an organization make decisions to obtain large financial rewards or to increase their academic profile, often at the expense of the interests of members of their research team, research participants, or even the populations affected by their research.

A company that puts money into making its drug work wants its drug to work. So, homeopathy is a good example, because there are not really any consequences of homeopathy, there are not very many side effects, because there are no effects at all. So, it’s not dangerous, but it’s not a good treatment either. But some people will want to make it work. And that’s a big issue when you’re sitting at a table and there are eight researchers, and there are two or three who are like that, and then there are four others who are neutral, and I say to myself, this is not science. I think that this is a very big ethical issue (participant 14). There are also times in some research where there will be more links with pharmaceutical companies. Obviously, there are then large amounts of money that will be very interesting for the health-care institutions because they still receive money for clinical trials. They’re still getting some compensation because its time consuming for the people involved and all that. The pharmaceutical companies have money, so they will compensate, and that is sometimes interesting for the institutions, and since we are a bit caught up in this, in the sense that we have no choice but to accept it. (…) It may not be the best research in the world, there may be a lot of side effects due to the drugs, but it’s good to accept it, we’re going to be part of the clinical trial (participant 3). It is integrity, what we believe should be done or said. Often by the pressure of the environment, integrity is in tension with the pressures of the environment, so it takes resistance, it takes courage in research. (…) There were all the debates there about the problems of research that was funded and then the companies kept control over what was written. That was really troubling for a lot of researchers (participant 5).

Further, these situations sometimes have negative consequences for research participants as reported by some participants.

Respect for research participants

Many research projects, whether they are psychosocial or biomedical in nature, involve human participants. Relationships between the members of research teams and their research participants raise ethical issues that can be complex. Research projects must always be designed to respect the rights and interests of research participants, and not just those of researchers. However, participants in our study – i.e., REB members, researchers, and research ethics experts – noted that some research teams seem to put their own interests ahead of those of research participants. They also emphasized the importance of ensuring the respect, well-being, and safety of research participants. The ethical issues related to this unit of meaning are: respect for free, informed and ongoing consent of research participants; respect for and the well-being of participants; data protection and confidentiality; over-solicitation of participants; ownership of the data collected on participants; the sometimes high cost of scientific innovations and their accessibility; balance between the social benefits of research and the risks to participants (particularly in terms of safety); balance between collective well-being (development of knowledge) and the individual rights of participants; exploitation of participants; paternalism when working with populations in vulnerable situations; and the social acceptability of certain types of research. The following excerpts present some of these issues.

Where it disturbs me ethically is in the medical field – because it’s more in the medical field that we’re going to see this – when consent forms are presented to patients to solicit them as participants, and then [these forms] have an average of 40 pages. That annoys me. When they say that it has to be easy to understand and all that, adapted to the language, and then the hyper-technical language plus there are 40 pages to read, I don’t understand how you’re going to get informed consent after reading 40 pages. (…) For me, it doesn’t work. I read them to evaluate them and I have a certain level of education and experience in ethics, and there are times when I don’t understand anything (participant 2). There is a lot of pressure from researchers who want to recruit research participants (…). The idea that when you enter a health care institution, you become a potential research participant, when you say “yes to a research, you check yes to all research”, then everyone can ask you. I think that researchers really have this fantasy of saying to themselves: “as soon as people walk through the door of our institution, they become potential participants with whom we can communicate and get them involved in all projects”. There’s a kind of idea that, yes, it can be done, but it has to be somewhat supervised to avoid over-solicitation (…). Researchers are very interested in facilitating recruitment and making it more fluid, but perhaps to the detriment of confidentiality, privacy, and respect; sometimes that’s what it is, to think about what type of data you’re going to have in your bank of potential participants? Is it just name and phone number or are you getting into more sensitive information? (participant 9).

In addition, one participant reported that their university does not provide the resources required to respect the confidentiality of research participants.

The issue is as follows: researchers, of course, commit to protecting data with passwords and all that, but we realize that in practice, it is more difficult. It is not always as protected as one might think, because professor-researchers will run out of space. Will the universities make rooms available to researchers, places where they can store these things, especially when they have paper documentation, and is there indeed a guarantee of confidentiality? Some researchers have told me: “Listen; there are even filing cabinets in the corridors”. So, that certainly poses a concrete challenge. How do we go about challenging the administrative authorities? Tell them it’s all very well to have an ethics committee, but you have to help us, you also have to make sure that the necessary infrastructures are in place so that what we are proposing is really put into practice (participant 4).

If the relationships with research participants are likely to raise ethical issues, so too are the relationships with students, notably research assistants. On this topic, several participants discussed the lack of supervision or recognition offered to research assistants by researchers as well as the power imbalances between members of the research team.

Lack of Supervision and Power Imbalances

Many research teams are composed not only of researchers, but also of students who work as research assistants. The relationship between research assistants and other members of research teams can sometimes be problematic and raise ethical issues, particularly because of the inevitable power asymmetries. In the context of this study, several participants – including a research assistant, REB members, and researchers – discussed the lack of supervision or recognition of the work carried out by students, psychological pressure, and the more or less well-founded promises that are sometimes made to students. Participants also mentioned the exploitation of students by certain research teams, which manifest when students are inadequately paid, i.e., not reflective of the number of hours actually worked, not a fair wage, or even a wage at all.

[As a research assistant], it was more of a feeling of distress that I felt then because I didn’t know what to do. (…) I was supposed to get coaching or be supported, but I didn’t get anything in the end. It was like, “fix it by yourself”. (…) All research assistants were supposed to be supervised, but in practice they were not (participant 1). Very often, we have a master’s or doctoral student that we put on a subject and we consider that the project will be well done, while the student is learning. So, it happens that the student will do a lot of work and then we realize that the work is poorly done, and it is not necessarily the student’s fault. He wasn’t necessarily well supervised. There are directors who have 25 students, and they just don’t supervise them (participant 14). I think it’s really the power relationship. I thought to myself, how I saw my doctorate, the beginning of my research career, I really wanted to be in that laboratory, but they are the ones who are going to accept me or not, so what do I do to be accepted? I finally accept their conditions [which was to work for free]. If these are the conditions that are required to enter this lab, I want to go there. So, what do I do, well I accepted. It doesn’t make sense, but I tell myself that I’m still privileged, because I don’t have so many financial worries, one more reason to work for free, even though it doesn’t make sense (participant 1). In research, we have research assistants. (…). The fact of using people… so that’s it, you have to take into account where they are, respect them, but at the same time they have to show that they are there for the research. In English, we say “carry” or take care of people. With research assistants, this is often a problem that I have observed: for grant machines, the person is the last to be found there. Researchers, who will take, use student data, without giving them the recognition for it (participant 5). The problem at our university is that they reserve funding for Canadian students. The doctoral clientele in my field is mostly foreign students. So, our students are poorly funded. I saw one student end up in the shelter, in a situation of poverty. It ended very badly for him because he lacked financial resources. Once you get into that dynamic, it’s very hard to get out. I was made aware of it because the director at the time had taken him under her wing and wanted to try to find a way to get him out of it. So, most of my students didn’t get funded (participant 16). There I wrote “manipulation”, but it’s kind of all promises all the time. I, for example, was promised a lot of advancement, like when I got into the lab as a graduate student, it was said that I had an interest in [this particular area of research]. I think there are a lot of graduate students who must have gone through that, but it is like, “Well, your CV has to be really good, if you want to do a lot of things and big things. If you do this, if you do this research contract, the next year you could be the coordinator of this part of the lab and supervise this person, get more contracts, be paid more. Let’s say: you’ll be invited to go to this conference, this big event”. They were always dangling something, but you have to do that first to get there. But now, when you’ve done that, you have to do this business. It’s like a bit of manipulation, I think. That was very hard to know who is telling the truth and who is not (participant 1).

These ethical issues have significant negative consequences for students. Indeed, they sometimes find themselves at the mercy of researchers, for whom they work, struggling to be recognized and included as authors of an article, for example, or to receive the salary that they are due. For their part, researchers also sometimes find themselves trapped in research structures that can negatively affect their well-being. As many participants reported, researchers work in organizations that set very high productivity standards and in highly competitive contexts, all within a general culture characterized by individualism.

Individualism and performance

Participants, especially researchers, discussed the culture of individualism and performance that characterizes the academic environment. In glorifying excellence, some universities value performance and productivity, often at the expense of psychological well-being and work-life balance (i.e., work overload and burnout). Participants noted that there are ethical silences in their organizations on this issue, and that the culture of individualism and performance is not challenged for fear of retribution or simply to survive, i.e., to perform as expected. Participants felt that this culture can have a significant negative impact on the quality of the research conducted, as research teams try to maximize the quantity of their work (instead of quality) in a highly competitive context, which is then exacerbated by a lack of resources and support, and where everything must be done too quickly.

The work-life balance with the professional ethics related to work in a context where you have too much and you have to do a lot, it is difficult to balance all that and there is a lot of pressure to perform. If you don’t produce enough, that’s it; after that, you can’t get any more funds, so that puts pressure on you to do more and more and more (participant 3). There is a culture, I don’t know where it comes from, and that is extremely bureaucratic. If you dare to raise something, you’re going to have many, many problems. They’re going to make you understand it. So, I don’t talk. It is better: your life will be easier. I think there are times when you have to talk (…) because there are going to be irreparable consequences. (…) I’m not talking about a climate of terror, because that’s exaggerated, it’s not true, people are not afraid. But people close their office door and say nothing because it’s going to make their work impossible and they’re not going to lose their job, they’re not going to lose money, but researchers need time to be focused, so they close their office door and say nothing (participant 16).

Researchers must produce more and more, and they feel little support in terms of how to do such production, ethically, and how much exactly they are expected to produce. As this participant reports, the expectation is an unspoken rule: more is always better.

It’s sometimes the lack of a clear line on what the expectations are as a researcher, like, “ah, we don’t have any specific expectations, but produce, produce, produce, produce.” So, in that context, it’s hard to be able to put the line precisely: “have I done enough for my work?” (participant 3).

Inadequate ethical Guidance

While the productivity expectation is not clear, some participants – including researchers, research ethics experts, and REB members – also felt that the ethical expectations of some REBs were unclear. The issue of the inadequate ethical guidance of research includes the administrative mechanisms to ensure that research projects respect the principles of research ethics. According to those participants, the forms required for both researchers and REB members are increasingly long and numerous, and one participant noted that the standards to be met are sometimes outdated and disconnected from the reality of the field. Multicentre ethics review (by several REBs) was also critiqued by a participant as an inefficient method that encumbers the processes for reviewing research projects. Bureaucratization imposes an ever-increasing number of forms and ethics guidelines that actually hinder researchers’ ethical reflection on the issues at stake, leading the ethics review process to be perceived as purely bureaucratic in nature.

The ethical dimension and the ethical review of projects have become increasingly bureaucratized. (…) When I first started working (…) it was less bureaucratic, less strict then. I would say [there are now] tons of forms to fill out. Of course, we can’t do without it, it’s one of the ways of marking out ethics and ensuring that there are ethical considerations in research, but I wonder if it hasn’t become too bureaucratized, so that it’s become a kind of technical reflex to fill out these forms, and I don’t know if people really do ethical reflection as such anymore (participant 10). The fundamental structural issue, I would say, is the mismatch between the normative requirements and the real risks posed by the research, i.e., we have many, many requirements to meet; we have very long forms to fill out but the research projects we evaluate often pose few risks (participant 8). People [in vulnerable situations] were previously unable to participate because of overly strict research ethics rules that were to protect them, but in the end [these rules] did not protect them. There was a perverse effect, because in the end there was very little research done with these people and that’s why we have very few results, very little evidence [to support practices with these populations] so it didn’t improve the quality of services. (…) We all understand that we have to be careful with that, but when the research is not too risky, we say to ourselves that it would be good because for once a researcher who is interested in that population, because it is not a very popular population, it would be interesting to have results, but often we are blocked by the norms, and then we can’t accept [the project] (participant 2).

Moreover, as one participant noted, accessing ethics training can be a challenge.

There is no course on research ethics. […] Then, I find that it’s boring because you go through university and you come to do your research and you know how to do quantitative and qualitative research, but all the research ethics, where do you get this? I don’t really know (participant 13).

Yet, such training could provide relevant tools to resolve, to some extent, the ethical issues that commonly arise in research. That said, and as noted by many participants, many ethical issues in research are related to social injustices over which research actors have little influence.

Social Injustices

For many participants, notably researchers, the issues that concern social injustices are those related to power asymmetries, stigma, or issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion, i.e., social injustices related to people’s identities (Blais & Drolet, 2022 ). Participants reported experiencing or witnessing discrimination from peers, administration, or lab managers. Such oppression is sometimes cross-sectional and related to a person’s age, cultural background, gender or social status.

I have my African colleague who was quite successful when he arrived but had a backlash from colleagues in the department. I think it’s unconscious, nobody is overtly racist. But I have a young person right now who is the same, who has the same success, who got exactly the same early career award and I don’t see the same backlash. He’s just as happy with what he’s doing. It’s normal, they’re young and they have a lot of success starting out. So, I think there is discrimination. Is it because he is African? Is it because he is black? I think it’s on a subconscious level (participant 16).

Social injustices were experienced or reported by many participants, and included issues related to difficulties in obtaining grants or disseminating research results in one’s native language (i.e., even when there is official bilingualism) or being considered credible and fundable in research when one researcher is a woman.

If you do international research, there are things you can’t talk about (…). It is really a barrier to research to not be able to (…) address this question [i.e. the question of inequalities between men and women]. Women’s inequality is going to be addressed [but not within the country where the research takes place as if this inequality exists elsewhere but not here]. There are a lot of women working on inequality issues, doing work and it’s funny because I was talking to a young woman who works at Cairo University and she said to me: “Listen, I saw what you had written, you’re right. I’m willing to work on this but guarantee me a position at your university with a ticket to go”. So yes, there are still many barriers [for women in research] (participant 16).

Because of the varied contextual characteristics that intervene in their occurrence, these social injustices are also related to distributive injustices, as discussed by many participants.

Distributive Injustices

Although there are several views of distributive justice, a classical definition such as that of Aristotle ( 2012 ), describes distributive justice as consisting in distributing honours, wealth, and other social resources or benefits among the members of a community in proportion to their alleged merit. Justice, then, is about determining an equitable distribution of common goods. Contemporary theories of distributive justice are numerous and varied. Indeed, many authors (e.g., Fraser 2011 ; Mills, 2017 ; Sen, 2011 ; Young, 2011 ) have, since Rawls ( 1971 ), proposed different visions of how social burdens and benefits should be shared within a community to ensure equal respect, fairness, and distribution. In our study, what emerges from participants’ narratives is a definite concern for this type of justice. Women researchers, francophone researchers, early career researchers or researchers belonging to racialized groups all discussed inequities in the distribution of research grants and awards, and the extra work they need to do to somehow prove their worth. These inequities are related to how granting agencies determine which projects will be funded.

These situations make me work 2–3 times harder to prove myself and to show people in power that I have a place as a woman in research (participant 12). Number one: it’s conservative thinking. The older ones control what comes in. So, the younger people have to adapt or they don’t get funded (participant 14).

Whether it is discrimination against stigmatized or marginalized populations or interest in certain hot topics, granting agencies judge research projects according to criteria that are sometimes questionable, according to those participants. Faced with difficulties in obtaining funding for their projects, several strategies – some of which are unethical – are used by researchers in order to cope with these situations.

Sometimes there are subjects that everyone goes to, such as nanotechnology (…), artificial intelligence or (…) the therapeutic use of cannabis, which are very fashionable, and this is sometimes to the detriment of other research that is just as relevant, but which is (…), less sexy, less in the spirit of the time. (…) Sometimes this can lead to inequities in the funding of certain research sectors (participant 9). When we use our funds, we get them given to us, we pretty much say what we think we’re going to do with them, but things change… So, when these things change, sometimes it’s an ethical decision, but by force of circumstances I’m obliged to change the project a little bit (…). Is it ethical to make these changes or should I just let the money go because I couldn’t use it the way I said I would? (participant 3).

Moreover, these distributional injustices are not only linked to social injustices, but also epistemic injustices. Indeed, the way in which research honours and grants are distributed within the academic community depends on the epistemic authority of the researchers, which seems to vary notably according to their language of use, their age or their gender, but also to the research design used (inductive versus deductive), their decision to use (or not use) animals in research, or to conduct activist research.

Epistemic injustices

The philosopher Fricker ( 2007 ) conceptualized the notions of epistemic justice and injustice. Epistemic injustice refers to a form of social inequality that manifests itself in the access, recognition, and production of knowledge as well as the various forms of ignorance that arise (Godrie & Dos Santos, 2017 ). Addressing epistemic injustice necessitates acknowledging the iniquitous wrongs suffered by certain groups of socially stigmatized individuals who have been excluded from knowledge, thus limiting their abilities to interpret, understand, or be heard and account for their experiences. In this study, epistemic injustices were experienced or reported by some participants, notably those related to difficulties in obtaining grants or disseminating research results in one’s native language (i.e., even when there is official bilingualism) or being considered credible and fundable in research when a researcher is a woman or an early career researcher.

I have never sent a grant application to the federal government in English. I have always done it in French, even though I know that when you receive the review, you can see that reviewers didn’t understand anything because they are English-speaking. I didn’t want to get in the boat. It’s not my job to translate, because let’s be honest, I’m not as good in English as I am in French. So, I do them in my first language, which is the language I’m most used to. Then, technically at the administrative level, they are supposed to be able to do it, but they are not good in French. (…) Then, it’s a very big Canadian ethical issue, because basically there are technically two official languages, but Canada is not a bilingual country, it’s a country with two languages, either one or the other. (…) So I was not funded (participant 14).

Researchers who use inductive (or qualitative) methods observed that their projects are sometimes less well reviewed or understood, while research that adopts a hypothetical-deductive (or quantitative) or mixed methods design is better perceived, considered more credible and therefore more easily funded. Of course, regardless of whether a research project adopts an inductive, deductive or mixed-methods scientific design, or whether it deals with qualitative or quantitative data, it must respect a set of scientific criteria. A research project should achieve its objectives by using proven methods that, in the case of inductive research, are credible, reliable, and transferable or, in the case of deductive research, generalizable, objective, representative, and valid (Drolet & Ruest, accepted ). Participants discussing these issues noted that researchers who adopt a qualitative design or those who question the relevance of animal experimentation or are not militant have sometimes been unfairly devalued in their epistemic authority.

There is a mini war between quantitative versus qualitative methods, which I think is silly because science is a method. If you apply the method well, it doesn’t matter what the field is, it’s done well and it’s perfect ” (participant 14). There is also the issue of the place of animals in our lives, because for me, ethics is human ethics, but also animal ethics. Then, there is a great evolution in society on the role of the animal… with the new law that came out in Quebec on the fact that animals are sensitive beings. Then, with the rise of the vegan movement, [we must ask ourselves]: “Do animals still have a place in research?” That’s a big question and it also means that there are practices that need to evolve, but sometimes there’s a disconnection between what’s expected by research ethics boards versus what’s expected in the field (participant 15). In research today, we have more and more research that is militant from an ideological point of view. And so, we have researchers, because they defend values that seem important to them, we’ll talk for example about the fight for equality and social justice. They have pressure to defend a form of moral truth and have the impression that everyone thinks like them or should do so, because they are defending a moral truth. This is something that we see more and more, namely the lack of distance between ideology and science (participant 8).

The combination or intersectionality of these inequities, which seems to be characterized by a lack of ethical support and guidance, is experienced in the highly competitive and individualistic context of research; it provides therefore the perfect recipe for researchers to experience ethical distress.

Ethical distress

The concept of “ethical distress” refers to situations in which people know what they should do to act ethically, but encounter barriers, generally of an organizational or systemic nature, limiting their power to act according to their moral or ethical values (Drolet & Ruest, 2021 ; Jameton, 1984 ; Swisher et al., 2005 ). People then run the risk of finding themselves in a situation where they do not act as their ethical conscience dictates, which in the long term has the potential for exhaustion and distress. The examples reported by participants in this study point to the fact that researchers in particular may be experiencing significant ethical distress. This distress takes place in a context of extreme competition, constant injunctions to perform, and where administrative demands are increasingly numerous and complex to complete, while paradoxically, they lack the time to accomplish all their tasks and responsibilities. Added to these demands are a lack of resources (human, ethical, and financial), a lack of support and recognition, and interpersonal conflicts.

We are in an environment, an elite one, you are part of it, you know what it is: “publish or perish” is the motto. Grants, there is a high level of performance required, to do a lot, to publish, to supervise students, to supervise them well, so yes, it is clear that we are in an environment that is conducive to distress. (…). Overwork, definitely, can lead to distress and eventually to exhaustion. When you know that you should take the time to read the projects before sharing them, but you don’t have the time to do that because you have eight that came in the same day, and then you have others waiting… Then someone rings a bell and says: “ah but there, the protocol is a bit incomplete”. Oh yes, look at that, you’re right. You make up for it, but at the same time it’s a bit because we’re in a hurry, we don’t necessarily have the resources or are able to take the time to do things well from the start, we have to make up for it later. So yes, it can cause distress (participant 9). My organization wanted me to apply in English, and I said no, and everyone in the administration wanted me to apply in English, and I always said no. Some people said: “Listen, I give you the choice”, then some people said: “Listen, I agree with you, but if you’re not [submitting] in English, you won’t be funded”. Then the fact that I am young too, because very often they will look at the CV, they will not look at the project: “ah, his CV is not impressive, we will not finance him”. This is complete nonsense. The person is capable of doing the project, the project is fabulous: we fund the project. So, that happened, organizational barriers: that happened a lot. I was not eligible for Quebec research funds (…). I had big organizational barriers unfortunately (participant 14). At the time of my promotion, some colleagues were not happy with the type of research I was conducting. I learned – you learn this over time when you become friends with people after you enter the university – that someone was against me. He had another candidate in mind, and he was angry about the selection. I was under pressure for the first three years until my contract was renewed. I almost quit at one point, but another colleague told me, “No, stay, nothing will happen”. Nothing happened, but these issues kept me awake at night (participant 16).

This difficult context for many researchers affects not only the conduct of their own research, but also their participation in research. We faced this problem in our study, despite the use of multiple recruitment methods, including more than 200 emails – of which 191 were individual solicitations – sent to potential participants by the two research assistants. REB members and organizations overseeing or supporting research (n = 17) were also approached to see if some of their employees would consider participating. While it was relatively easy to recruit REB members and research ethics experts, our team received a high number of non-responses to emails (n = 175) and some refusals (n = 5), especially by researchers. The reasons given by those who replied were threefold: (a) fear of being easily identified should they take part in the research, (b) being overloaded and lacking time, and (c) the intrusive aspect of certain questions (i.e., “Have you experienced a burnout episode? If so, have you been followed up medically or psychologically?”). In light of these difficulties and concerns, some questions in the socio-demographic questionnaire were removed or modified. Talking about burnout in research remains a taboo for many researchers, which paradoxically can only contribute to the unresolved problem of unhealthy research environments.

Returning to the research question and objective

The question that prompted this research was: What are the ethical issues in research? The purpose of the study was to describe these issues from the perspective of researchers (from different disciplines), research ethics board (REB) members, and research ethics experts. The previous section provided a detailed portrait of the ethical issues experienced by different research stakeholders: these issues are numerous, diverse and were recounted by a range of stakeholders.

The results of the study are generally consistent with the literature. For example, as in our study, the literature discusses the lack of research integrity on the part of some researchers (Al-Hidabi et al., 2018 ; Swazey et al., 1993 ), the numerous conflicts of interest experienced in research (Williams-Jones et al., 2013 ), the issues of recruiting and obtaining the free and informed consent of research participants (Provencher et al., 2014 ; Keogh & Daly, 2009 ), the sometimes difficult relations between researchers and REBs (Drolet & Girard, 2020 ), the epistemological issues experienced in research (Drolet & Ruest, accepted; Sieber 2004 ), as well as the harmful academic context in which researchers evolve, insofar as this is linked to a culture of performance, an overload of work in a context of accountability (Berg & Seeber, 2016 ; FQPPU; 2019 ) that is conducive to ethical distress and even burnout.

If the results of the study are generally in line with those of previous publications on the subject, our findings also bring new elements to the discussion while complementing those already documented. In particular, our results highlight the role of systemic injustices – be they social, distributive or epistemic – within the environments in which research is carried out, at least in Canada. To summarize, the results of our study point to the fact that the relationships between researchers and research participants are likely still to raise worrying ethical issues, despite widely accepted research ethics norms and institutionalized review processes. Further, the context in which research is carried out is not only conducive to breaches of ethical norms and instances of misbehaviour or misconduct, but also likely to be significantly detrimental to the health and well-being of researchers, as well as research assistants. Another element that our research also highlighted is the instrumentalization and even exploitation of students and research assistants, which is another important and worrying social injustice given the inevitable power imbalances between students and researchers.

Moreover, in a context in which ethical issues are often discussed from a micro perspective, our study helps shed light on both the micro- and macro-level ethical dimensions of research (Bronfenbrenner, 1979 ; Glaser 1994 ). However, given that ethical issues in research are not only diverse, but also and above all complex, a broader perspective that encompasses the interplay between the micro and macro dimensions can enable a better understanding of these issues and thereby support the identification of the multiple factors that may be at their origin. Triangulating the perspectives of researchers with those of REB members and research ethics experts enabled us to bring these elements to light, and thus to step back from and critique the way that research is currently conducted. To this end, attention to socio-political elements such as the performance culture in academia or how research funds are distributed, and according to what explicit and implicit criteria, can contribute to identifying the sources of the ethical issues described above.

Contemporary culture characterized by the social acceleration

The German sociologist and philosopher Rosa (2010) argues that late modernity – that is, the period between the 1980s and today – is characterized by a phenomenon of social acceleration that causes various forms of alienation in our relationship to time, space, actions, things, others and ourselves. Rosa distinguishes three types of acceleration: technical acceleration , the acceleration of social changes and the acceleration of the rhythm of life . According to Rosa, social acceleration is the main problem of late modernity, in that the invisible social norm of doing more and faster to supposedly save time operates unchallenged at all levels of individual and collective life, as well as organizational and social life. Although we all, researchers and non-researchers alike, perceive this unspoken pressure to be ever more productive, the process of social acceleration as a new invisible social norm is our blind spot, a kind of tyrant over which we have little control. This conceptualization of the contemporary culture can help us to understand the context in which research is conducted (like other professional practices). To this end, Berg & Seeber ( 2016 ) invite faculty researchers to slow down in order to better reflect and, in the process, take care of their health and their relationships with their colleagues and students. Many women professors encourage their fellow researchers, especially young women researchers, to learn to “say No” in order to protect their mental and physical health and to remain in their academic careers (Allaire & Descheneux, 2022 ). These authors also remind us of the relevance of Kahneman’s ( 2012 ) work which demonstrates that it takes time to think analytically, thoroughly, and logically. Conversely, thinking quickly exposes humans to cognitive and implicit biases that then lead to errors in thinking (e.g., in the analysis of one’s own research data or in the evaluation of grant applications or student curriculum vitae). The phenomenon of social acceleration, which pushes the researcher to think faster and faster, is likely to lead to unethical bad science that can potentially harm humankind. In sum, Rosa’s invitation to contemporary critical theorists to seriously consider the problem of social acceleration is particularly insightful to better understand the ethical issues of research. It provides a lens through which to view the toxic context in which research is conducted today, and one that was shared by the participants in our study.

Clark & Sousa ( 2022 ) note, it is important that other criteria than the volume of researchers’ contributions be valued in research, notably quality. Ultimately, it is the value of the knowledge produced and its influence on the concrete lives of humans and other living beings that matters, not the quantity of publications. An interesting articulation of this view in research governance is seen in a change in practice by Australia’s national health research funder: they now restrict researchers to listing on their curriculum vitae only the top ten publications from the past ten years (rather than all of their publications), in order to evaluate the quality of contributions rather than their quantity. To create environments conducive to the development of quality research, it is important to challenge the phenomenon of social acceleration, which insidiously imposes a quantitative normativity that is both alienating and detrimental to the quality and ethical conduct of research. Based on our experience, we observe that the social norm of acceleration actively disfavours the conduct of empirical research on ethics in research. The fact is that researchers are so busy that it is almost impossible for them to find time to participate in such studies. Further, operating in highly competitive environments, while trying to respect the values and ethical principles of research, creates ethical paradoxes for members of the research community. According to Malherbe ( 1999 ), an ethical paradox is a situation where an individual is confronted by contradictory injunctions (i.e., do more, faster, and better). And eventually, ethical paradoxes lead individuals to situations of distress and burnout, or even to ethical failures (i.e., misbehaviour or misconduct) in the face of the impossibility of responding to contradictory injunctions.

Strengths and Limitations of the study

The triangulation of perceptions and experiences of different actors involved in research is a strength of our study. While there are many studies on the experiences of researchers, rarely are members of REBs and experts in research ethics given the space to discuss their views of what are ethical issues. Giving each of these stakeholders a voice and comparing their different points of view helped shed a different and complementary light on the ethical issues that occur in research. That said, it would have been helpful to also give more space to issues experienced by students or research assistants, as the relationships between researchers and research assistants are at times very worrying, as noted by a participant, and much work still needs to be done to eliminate the exploitative situations that seem to prevail in certain research settings. In addition, no Indigenous or gender diverse researchers participated in the study. Given the ethical issues and systemic injustices that many people from these groups face in Canada (Drolet & Goulet, 2018 ; Nicole & Drolet, in press ), research that gives voice to these researchers would be relevant and contribute to knowledge development, and hopefully also to change in research culture.

Further, although most of the ethical issues discussed in this article may be transferable to the realities experienced by researchers in other countries, the epistemic injustice reported by Francophone researchers who persist in doing research in French in Canada – which is an officially bilingual country but in practice is predominantly English – is likely specific to the Canadian reality. In addition, and as mentioned above, recruitment proved exceedingly difficult, particularly amongst researchers. Despite this difficulty, we obtained data saturation for all but two themes – i.e., exploitation of students and ethical issues of research that uses animals. It follows that further empirical research is needed to improve our understanding of these specific issues, as they may diverge to some extent from those documented here and will likely vary across countries and academic research contexts.

Conclusions

This study, which gave voice to researchers, REB members, and ethics experts, reveals that the ethical issues in research are related to several problematic elements as power imbalances and authority relations. Researchers and research assistants are subject to external pressures that give rise to integrity issues, among others ethical issues. Moreover, the current context of social acceleration influences the definition of the performance indicators valued in academic institutions and has led their members to face several ethical issues, including social, distributive, and epistemic injustices, at different steps of the research process. In this study, ten categories of ethical issues were identified, described and illustrated: (1) research integrity, (2) conflicts of interest, (3) respect for research participants, (4) lack of supervision and power imbalances, (5) individualism and performance, (6) inadequate ethical guidance, (7) social injustices, (8) distributive injustices, (9) epistemic injustices, and (10) ethical distress. The triangulation of the perspectives of different members (i.e., researchers from different disciplines, REB members, research ethics experts, and one research assistant) involved in the research process made it possible to lift the veil on some of these ethical issues. Further, it enabled the identification of additional ethical issues, especially systemic injustices experienced in research. To our knowledge, this is the first time that these injustices (social, distributive, and epistemic injustices) have been clearly identified.

Finally, this study brought to the fore several problematic elements that are important to address if the research community is to develop and implement the solutions needed to resolve the diverse and transversal ethical issues that arise in research institutions. A good starting point is the rejection of the corollary norms of “publish or perish” and “do more, faster, and better” and their replacement with “publish quality instead of quantity”, which necessarily entails “do less, slower, and better”. It is also important to pay more attention to the systemic injustices within which researchers work, because these have the potential to significantly harm the academic careers of many researchers, including women researchers, early career researchers, and those belonging to racialized groups as well as the health, well-being, and respect of students and research participants.

Acknowledgements

The team warmly thanks the participants who took part in the research and who made this study possible. Marie-Josée Drolet thanks the five research assistants who participated in the data collection and analysis: Julie-Claude Leblanc, Élie Beauchemin, Pénéloppe Bernier, Louis-Pierre Côté, and Eugénie Rose-Derouin, all students at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), two of whom were active in the writing of this article. MJ Drolet and Bryn Williams-Jones also acknowledge the financial contribution of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which supported this research through a grant. We would also like to thank the reviewers of this article who helped us improve it, especially by clarifying and refining our ideas.

Competing Interests and Funding

As noted in the Acknowledgements, this research was supported financially by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Ethical considerations in research: Best practices and examples

To conduct responsible research, you’ve got to think about ethics. They protect participants’ rights and their well-being - and they ensure your findings are valid and reliable. This isn’t just a box for you to tick. It’s a crucial consideration that can make all the difference to the outcome of your research.

In this article, we'll explore the meaning and importance of research ethics in today's research landscape. You'll learn best practices to conduct ethical and impactful research.

Examples of ethical considerations in research

As a researcher, you're responsible for ethical research alongside your organization. Fulfilling ethical guidelines is critical. Organizations must ensure employees follow best practices to protect participants' rights and well-being.

Keep these things in mind when it comes to ethical considerations in research:

Voluntary participation

Voluntary participation is key. Nobody should feel like they're being forced to participate or pressured into doing anything they don't want to. That means giving people a choice and the ability to opt out at any time, even if they've already agreed to take part in the study.

Informed consent

Informed consent isn't just an ethical consideration. It's a legal requirement as well. Participants must fully understand what they're agreeing to, including potential risks and benefits.

The best way to go about this is by using a consent form. Make sure you include:

• A brief description of the study and research methods.
• The potential benefits and risks of participating.
• The length of the study.
• Contact information for the researcher and/or sponsor.
• Reiteration of the participant’s right to withdraw from the research project at any time without penalty.

Anonymity means that participants aren't identifiable in any way. This includes:

• Email address
• Photographs
• Video footage

You need a way to anonymize research data so that it can't be traced back to individual participants. This may involve creating a new digital ID for participants that can’t be linked back to their original identity using numerical codes.

Confidentiality

Information gathered during a study must be kept confidential. Confidentiality helps to protect the privacy of research participants. It also ensures that their information isn't disclosed to unauthorized individuals.

Some ways to ensure confidentiality include:

• Using a secure server to store data.
• Removing identifying information from databases that contain sensitive data.
• Using a third-party company to process and manage research participant data.
• Not keeping participant records for longer than necessary.
• Avoiding discussion of research findings in public forums.

Potential for harm

​​The potential for harm is a crucial factor in deciding whether a research study should proceed. It can manifest in various forms, such as:

• Psychological harm
• Social harm
• Physical harm

Conduct an ethical review to identify possible harms. Be prepared to explain how you’ll minimize these harms and what support is available in case they do happen.

Fair payment

One of the most crucial aspects of setting up a research study is deciding on fair compensation for your participants. Underpayment is a common ethical issue that shouldn't be overlooked. Properly rewarding participants' time is critical for boosting engagement and obtaining high-quality data. While Prolific requires a minimum payment of £6.00 / $8.00 per hour, there are other factors you need to consider when deciding on a fair payment.

First, check your institution's reimbursement guidelines to see if they already have a minimum or maximum hourly rate. You can also use the national minimum wage as a reference point.

Next, think about the amount of work you're asking participants to do. The level of effort required for a task, such as producing a video recording versus a short survey, should correspond with the reward offered.

You also need to consider the population you're targeting. To attract research subjects with specific characteristics or high-paying jobs, you may need to offer more as an incentive.

We recommend a minimum payment of £9.00 / $12.00 per hour, but we understand that payment rates can vary depending on a range of factors. Whatever payment you choose should reflect the amount of effort participants are required to put in and be fair to everyone involved.

Ethical research made easy with Prolific

At Prolific, we believe in making ethical research easy and accessible. The findings from the Fairwork Cloudwork report speak for themselves. Prolific was given the top score out of all competitors for minimum standards of fair work.

With over 25,000 researchers in our community, we're leading the way in revolutionizing the research industry. If you're interested in learning more about how we can support your research journey, sign up to get started now.

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Ethical Research in Business Ethics

• Editorial Essay
• Published: 29 November 2022
• Volume 182 , pages 1–5, ( 2023 )

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• Gazi Islam 1 &
• Michelle Greenwood 2  

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In this editorial essay, we argue that business ethics research should be aware of the ethical implications of its own methodological choices, and that these implications include, but go beyond, mere compliance with standardized ethical norms. Methodological choices should be made specifically with reference to their effects on the world, both within and outside the academy. Awareness of these effects takes researchers beyond assuring ethics in their methods to more fully consider the ethics of their methods as knowledge practices that have broader institutional consequences. Drawing from examples in published research, we examine five ways in which authors can formulate their methodological approaches with purpose, care and reflexivity.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Business ethicists are accustomed to confronting the “hard cases” of ethical choices in organizational life. We believe that business ethics scholarship must be equally sensitive to ethical nuances in the design and implementation of research methods in our own activities. In the complexities of research practice, ethical considerations around method and design exceed the standardized templates of methods textbooks. Where research designs begin and end and whom they implicate as protagonists, who receives voice, protection and authority, and what is rendered visible and invisible within the field of study. These are thorny questions that are not amenable to check-list style compliance guidelines, even where such guidelines also have an important role (cf., Greenwood, 2016 ).

In our exchanges with authors and within the editorial team, we have confronted a plethora of hard cases that highlight the challenges of research ethics beyond rule compliance. To what extent should the mode of data collection (such as crowdsourced data or social media platforms) answer to ethical quandaries around digital labour and online surveillance? When should organizations or individuals engaging in ethically problematic practices be named, and when must they be anonymized? To what extent should the relationships between researchers and participants be problematized within methods sections, including financial and power relationships between funders, researchers and participants? What are the respective roles of institutional ethics boards and journal editorial teams (along with other actors in the research ecosystem) in validating the ethical permissibility of a design? When should hard ethical questions lead a study to be rejected at the review stage, rather than passed along to the research community to make its own judgment? Such questions (and many, many more) have filled our days with deep reflection, and the current editorial aims to share some of these reflections with the Journal of Business Ethics community, albeit in necessarily schematic form. Specifically, we aim to both expand thinking about research ethics to include elements that are often considered outside of methods, and situate conventional methodological ethics in relation to this broader vision. The result will be a plea for a research ethics based on purpose, care and reflexivity.

Between Prescriptive and Evaluative Research Ethics

In a previous editorial essay (Islam & Greenwood, 2021 ), we borrowed a distinction by Williams ( 1985 ) between prescriptive and evaluative ethics; the former refers to what one should do, while the latter to what the world should look like. Mapped onto methods, this analytical distinction differentiates between specific methodological practices (e.g., one should design measures that fit the core constructs, one should gather informed consent) and the broader social and practical implications of research (e.g., the goals of science to innovate, educate or emancipate). We emphasize that this is an “analytical” distinction because, in practice, these aspects of ethics are deeply intertwined, and we distinguish them primarily to show how they spill into each other. Actions should be prescribed, at least in part, for the worlds they contribute to making, although in the fog of situated practice, we are often unaware of, or unable to, clearly link our actions to those future worlds.

From this distinction, it is easy to differentiate heuristically between ethics in research methods, that is, the ethical norms and practices internal to research design and execution, and the ethics of research methods, that is, whether those methods should be used in the broader evaluative sense. In many cases, these ethical levels align, with ethical practices working toward an evaluatively desirable world. Gathering informed consent is important because it is desirable to promote a world of autonomous choice (e.g., Hansson, 2006 ). Hypothesizing after the results are known is problematic because promoting false positive statistical results reduces replicability and thus scientific certainty about the world (Kerr, 1998 ). To take the previous example, however, some have argued that “HARK”ing is less ethically problematic when research is transparently exploratory (Hollenbeck & Wright, 2017 ); in this case, what is ethically problematic is not the practice per se, but the lack of transparency between a given practice and its exploratory (rather than confirmatory) intent. As for informed consent, in cases where a signed form substitutes for, rather than expresses, true participant autonomy (cf., Dubois et al, 2012 ), it can obscure rather than clarify the ethics of a research project. To begin with, the presentation of a priori formulated protocols for consent presumes that the identified participant is the only stakeholder in the research who is affected by the research in a manner that would require their consent. Moreover, this protocol may preclude collaborative models in which participants actively construct research protocols with researchers (Hansson, 2006 ). In both of these examples, a practice is justified on the basis of a deeper evaluative motive, but the mapping between the two is imperfect and situation-dependent.

Tensions may appear between prescriptive and evaluative dimensions of research methods, giving rise to ethical polemics or dilemmas. To give one example, we have had recent debates around the ethics of online data crowdsourcing from platforms such as Amazon MTurk (e.g., Newman et al., 2021 ). Much discussion has been given to best practice in terms of construct validity and similar “internal” considerations of research design as well as issues such as “bots” or fraudulent respondent activity that affect validity. However, broader considerations in terms of labour exploitation on online platforms (e.g., Shank, 2016 ) bridge internal and external research ethics, given internal norms for participant autonomy and external considerations of the public good. Less discussed are the systematic effects of widespread use of online data collection for disembodying researchers from participant communities, entrenching economies of digital labour and surveillance, and reifying a context-free individual as the object of social scientific study. These, we would argue, are methodological outcomes that may contribute to undesirable worlds, and thus are materially relevant for ethical consideration.

Other examples illustrate the opposite tension between prescriptive and evaluative research ethics. In a provocative article, Roulet et al. ( 2017 ) describe the potentials of “covert” research, where normally unacceptable practices of researcher concealment are weighed against laudable goals such as revealing workplace abuse or unethical organizational practices. In such cases, practices that are prescriptively problematic (e.g., collecting data without consent, concealing researcher identity) are defended on the grounds that the ethical goods, in terms of creating a better world, legitimate such practices. While the example of online platforms seems more defensible at the level of practice but questionable at the level of broad systemic implications, that of covert research seems more problematic at the level of practices while (possibly) defensible in terms of its ethical purposes.

More than simply a conflict between means and ends, however, such tensions reveal discrepancies between ends that are “localized” as specific practices (e.g., the goal of conducting a valid study according to current norms) and the more broad-based ends of research (e.g., creating a better world through socially reflexive knowledge production). Our challenge at the Journal of Business Ethics as editors, and our counsel to authors, reviewers and editors is to reflexively seek equilibrium between the practical ethics of research design and execution and the broader promotion of the public good that is the ultimate end of science.

Guiding Ethical Research in Business Ethics

Situating research ethics within the relationship between concrete ethical practices and evaluative goals of social improvement adds complexity to ethical decisions, forcing researchers, reviewers and editors to confront real ethical dilemmas that cannot be dissolved in mere compliance practices. We think the recognition of this complexity is salutary. It emphasizes that the review process is one moment in the broader network of evaluative practices that includes—but is not limited to—institutional ethics approval processes prior to submission, ethical and legal considerations of publishing houses and scholarly societies that administer academic production, and reception of research after publication. Each of these moments bring into light different ethical stakes, and we see our editorial role as an important but not exhaustive evaluative moment. From our perspective, our role is not to present a hurdle over which only the most flawless research can pass, but to curate a conversation with the greatest potential for scholarly generativity and progress. This makes our goal a collective one, and we judge research for its ability to promote the field, by being rigorous, by being interesting, by being reflexive, or by some combination of these epistemic virtues. From the research ethics we have outlined we derive certain guiding principles for evaluation.

Showing Links Between Methodological Design and the Broader Purpose of the Study

Business ethics scholarship should clarify its purpose through clearly articulated research questions and hypotheses, while explaining in its methods why specific research practices are important for a broader purpose, and why that purpose is itself ethically relevant. Specifically, the methods discussion should reflect how the ethics-related purpose of the study is consistent with the methodological approach adopted, both in terms of the broad design and specific practices. In short, integration of methods with the wider purpose of the study, and alignment between the two, is a mark of ethically sensitive research.

In their recent study of child labour in Indian cottonseed oil farms, D’Cruz et al. ( 2022 ) demonstrate an exemplary integration of methods and purpose to explore a topic that is notoriously difficult to study methodologically. Drawing on analyses of children’s drawings, together with detailed conversational extracts, the authors paint a powerful picture of the experience of violence in a population of working children. Rather than staying only at the level of lived experiences, however, the authors use those experiences to understand how processes of embedding and disembedding labour within society are manifested at the micro level. Thus, their visual and discursive methods become powerful tools to link everyday suffering with macro processes of economy and society.

Acknowledging the Web of Relationships Within Which Research Methods are Embedded

Each aspect of the research process, from protocol design to data collection to peer review, involves multiple actors who collectively construct the meaning of scholarship (Greenwood, 2016 ). While it may not be possible to make this network entirely visible, the ability to do so increases the transparency and value of a scholarly inquiry.

In his study of external funding on research freedom, Goduscheit ( 2022 ) uses qualitative interviews, program materials and observations to understand how funding bodies shape research outcomes. He shows how expectations from funding bodies can shape the types of topics studied, the ways in which research questions are answered and the forms of research output that are produced. Rather than simply deeming such influences to be unethical, he analyses the positive and negative features of the evolving relationships between researchers and funding bodies and their implications for developing scholarship.

Similarly acknowledging relationships but on a very different topic, Allen et al. ( 2019 ) describe the role of reflexivity in sustainability research, where ecological responsibility can result from acknowledging the multiple relationships between humans and the environment. Promoting an “ecocentric radical-reflexivity”, they point to how methods such as participatory action research and arts-based methods can help identify organizational actors as embedded in ecological relationships. In this example, as in the previous one, research is recognized as more than simply the execution of accepted standards. Rather, ethical research depends on developing sensibilities towards the complex economic and ecological relationships in which scholarship is situated.

Complementing Compliance with Purpose

Ethics should be explicitly discussed as an aspect of methodology, but this is best done when a focus on compliance with standards is complemented by a consideration of core ethical issues and a transparent discussion of how decisions were made in response to those issues. Doing so reveals those decisions as tailor-made for the case at hand and not imposed upon the case without regard for its specificities (Greenwood, 2016 ). In other words, compliance is not a sufficient criterion for ethical research methods, and a methodological approach focused exclusively on ethical compliance criteria may miss the “bigger picture” of the role of the methods in the broader scientific and social goals of the study.

Nielsen’s ( 2016 ) paper on ethical praxis and action research elaborates on how research involves ethical decision making and situated, pragmatic choices that go beyond simply ticking the correct ethical boxes. Describing these from an Aristotelian perspective, he elaborates how researcher-participant interactions give rise to emergent research concerns that are both knowledge-related problems and problems for practice. The ethics of action research in this context is about facing unique problems that cut across the researcher-practitioner divide and can draw upon but are not limited to pre-existing ethics templates.

Adopting an Explanatory Versus a Justificatory Orientation

Methodological descriptions of ethics often have the tone of justification claims legitimizing authorial choices in terms of sample, data collection or analysis. Such justifications are warranted, and are good practice, but we believe that value is added when authors are more forthright about their ethical difficulties and dilemmas. Specifically, we value their attempts to work out those dilemmas transparently for a scholarly audience, that is thereby given access into the workings of scientific decision-making process and not simply presented with a black box labeled “method”. There is more value in showing the path taken to an ethical judgement than simply defending that the end decision was a good one. This also implies that wrong turns, changes of track, and similar ethical revisions should be described and contribute to the value of a paper.

Litz’s and Turner’s ( 2013 ) study of unethical practices in inherited family firms provides an interesting case of how researchers can productively describe the dilemmas they face methodologically. Given the difficulty of gathering data about the unethical practices of family members, they candidly ask “how does one approach a question so laced with shame and stigma?”(p.303). Rather than presenting their method in terms of templates used to justify their choices, they recruit the readers directly into their dilemma and walk them through their choices, which involved confronting participants with dramatic scenarios that allowed them to disclose intimately held views more safely. Ultimately building this technique into a validation exercise and a quantitative analysis, the latter are given credibility by their grounding in the initial researcher dilemma that led to the methodological approach.

Transparency and Reflexivity in Writing and Link Between Methods and Results Sections

Because transparent and reflexive description of methods integrates theoretical considerations within the methods itself, such description allows the method to operate more organically within the broader argument of the paper. Doing so allows authors to establish links between the methods and discussion sections, to describe what went right or wrong, what the limitations and possibilities of the method were, and how future research could remedy possible shortcomings or harms of the given method.

For example, Bontempi et al. ( 2021 ) study of CSR reporting inspired by the case of the Ethiopian Gibe III dam is exemplary of how methods can be used to reflexively and transparently link methods and results. Engaging in a “counter reporting”, the study draws upon conceptual literature, archival and theoretical research, and activist on-the-ground engagement to build an alternative view of reported social engagement around hydroelectric dams. Alternating between inductive and deductive approaches, these authors were particularly reflexive and deeply transparent in their methodological description, including detailed and publicly available information from their codebook in the article’s supplementary materials. The result went beyond the standard critique of CSR discourses to actively create a counter-discourse that was both scholarly and activist in orientation. The resulting discursive struggle continued onto the blogosphere, with methodological debate between the authors and the company itself over methods. Footnote 1 We see such interaction and engagement as key to the social relevance of research.

Purpose, Care and Reflexivity

Research ethics have conventionally been concerned with the procedural aspects of scholarship, in particular the methods. Gold standard in this regard has been to not merely treat ethical standards as hurdles but as aspirations. In this sense an ethical researcher is one who does not only comply but who also cares. We suggest that care requires researcher to actively reflect on and take responsibility for their ethical practices and their research goals, and to situate their practices reflexively within a broader collective process of scholarly inquiry. Thus, we extend the notion of care to embrace the reflexivity of the researcher with regard to their own positionality (and privilege) and with regard to the purpose of research, treating ethics as central to the entire research endeavor. Complementing ethical theorizing that draws data from orthodox empirical methods, we encourage scholars to take up new forms of ethical empirical research in which connections between the conduct of the research and the motivation of the research are deeply and actively formed. The guiding principles we outline in this editorial are aimed at integrating organic, particularized and reflective narratives about the ethical conduct and goals of research in the methods section and throughout the manuscript. Editors, reviewers and authors can all contribute to treating research ethics more centrally in business ethics research.

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Islam, G., Greenwood, M. Ethical Research in Business Ethics. J Bus Ethics 182 , 1–5 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05301-z

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Published : 29 November 2022

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177 Interesting Ethics Paper Topics For Your Thesis

Ethics is a branch of study in philosophy that studies the concept of morality—what is good or bad, what is acceptable or unacceptable. It’s a philosophical theory that looks into moral rules and codes, principles, value systems, and other related concepts.

In academia, an ethical theory is used as one of the analytical tools in drawing analysis on several socio-cultural topics. Ethics can be applied to any particular subject matter in human society. And, on this, so many compelling, controversial or interesting ethical topics for academic essays and research papers have continued to spring up.

For students writing either an essay or a research paper on ethics, there are some relevant things to note about a good essay/research topic and writing a dissertation. They include:

Brainstorm on different topics Always go for a topic you are familiar with Choose a topic that has enough “flesh”. This is important as interesting topics will help you develop your essay/research Define your subject of interest. It makes the writing easier Properly researching for topics that serve contemporary social relevance Outlining is important for your research topic

What following some of these processes does for your essay/research/thesis is that it enriches your work and affords you the ability to communicate ideas clearly to readers. Here are some topics in ethics you can use for your essay/research.

Interesting Top Level Ethics Paper Topics for All Students

Writing a paper on ethics makes for an interesting writing experience because they usually require that the writer make a case for a particular subject based on whether the subject is right or wrong. There are so many ethical topics for papers. As a student, there are several ethical questions to debate, and you can choose to model your topic using some of these samples:

• Discuss what should be done concerning the rise in the ban on safe abortion
• Is the right to safe abortion practice unethical?
• Should abortion practice be promoted or championed for women in society?
• Are humans truly the root source for the issues of climate change and global warming the world is currently experiencing?
• Is it right to discriminate against the sexes?
• Is there a defining difference between sexes and gender?
• Is the practice of gender-based violence ethical?
• Should safe sexual practices be promoted?
• Sex: A Study of the growing practice of sexual relationships outside marriage
• Domestic Violence and how it can be combated
• Marijuana: The distinction to its health roles and health challenges it poses on individuals
• Is it unethical to promote capitalism and capitalist concepts?
• A Study of Racism and measures to ensure its decline
• Is it ethical to be a millionaire while there are so many less privileged people?
• A study of the ethical challenges that come with being in the academia
• Is war an ethical practice?
• Why LGBTQ+ people should not be discriminated against
• What are the ways workplace ethics can address issues of homophobia and internalized sexism?
• Is sexism in the workplace an ethical practice?
• The issue of microaggression and how it can be addressed
• A study of why workplaces need ethical conduct that monitors issues of workplace harassment
• Should salaries be uneven?
• How unethical are uneven salary payment structures?
• Should start-up tech companies hire more men for starters?
• How people can prioritize online privacy
• Is bridging online privacy unethical?
• Is the right to privacy unethical?

Engaging Ethical Dilemma Topics

As ethics deals with the debate on morals, one of the ways topics on ethics manifests is in the subject of dilemma. Topics like this focus on trying to find a suitable justification for one idea over another. There are several ethics topics to write about on this subject. Some of them include:

• Should students be allowed to bring their phones to school?
• Should parents police every social activity of their children?
• Should teachers use the cane on students as a disciplinary measure?
• Is flogging a good correctional practice?
• Should you leave your partner if they are of opposing political views?
• Should opposing religious beliefs be a deal-breaker in relationships?
• Should capitalism be abolished completely?
• Should a teacher maintain some level of friendship with their students?
• Is there any lingering importance of capitalism to society?
• Is revenge a viable option in a relationship if your partner cheats on you?
• Is sharing your experiences online the same as showing off a lifestyle?
• Should people from different religious beliefs and backgrounds partner?
• Is checking the DNA of your children important or necessary?
• Should parents enforce their children on behaviors to take up?
• Can discipline properly correct the attitudes of a child?
• Should eating junk foods be avoided completely?
• Should Halloween Trick or Treat and Costume be prioritized over Thanksgiving Dinners?
• Should children hold different religious beliefs from their parents while still young?
• Does strict parenting serve as the best way to raise a child?
• Is it important to reveal a secret to a friend or to keep one’s peace?
• Should cooking at home be prioritized over eating out?
• Is socialism a more suitable social practice than capitalism?
• Is accepting financial assistance from your parents acceptable after a certain age?
• Should school authorities seize phones brought to school?
• Is sending a child to a mixed school better than same-sex schools?
• Can afforestation alone save the world from global warming and the general climate change condition?
• Does being educated equate with being intelligent?

Ethical Issues to Write about in Your College Essay

One important thing to note about ethical topics is that they touch across so many different subjects. As a college student preparing to write an essay on ethics, rest assured as there are so many ethics ideas to write about. Here are some ethical topics to write about:

• Does Hiring female employees cover a company’s sexist motives?
• Should Actors be paid more than teachers?
• Taking medical decisions for a patient without their consent
• How ethical is the interference of the judiciary by the legislative arm of government?
• Is it ethical to fire someone due to their dress code?
• Is it unethical to wear colored hair to work?
• Is censorship ethical?
• Where does media censorship draw the line?
• Is it ethical for religious figureheads to meddle in state politics?
• Should gender be the reason why a person is restricted access to certain social privileges?
• Should sexuality be a discriminatory factor in society?
• Should companies and places of work provide counseling and therapy services for their employees?
• Can Children wear makeup on special occasions?
• Is it unethical to make medical decisions for a patient without any recognizable relatives?
• Does dress code need to affect how you are addressed?
• Should implementing ethics in sports be recommended?
• Is police brutality an ethical practice?
• The impacts of the excessive consumption of media content?
• Is the excessive use of social media healthy?
• How can companies ensure paid maternal and paternal leave?
• How can the inclusion of non-binary people in company policies promote growth?
• Is exclusion on the grounds of sexuality ethical?
• Is exclusion due to political beliefs unethical?
• How to promote ethical work culture?
• How can a company ensure that ethical practices are promoted in their companies?

Ethical Argument Topics to Write About

The best part about writing an ethical essay is that it is about anything that is of interest. An important aspect of the ethical argument topic is that it is supported with evidence. There are so many ethical topics to write about that fall within this category, and they include:

• Is the having of ethical codes and conducts important in an organization?
• Should people only implement progressive ideas to meet societal needs?
• Why LGBTQ+ should not be discriminated against
• Is it unethical to come to work late?
• Is government-sanctioned execution an ethical practice?
• Is the American incarceration system an effective corrective system?
• Is corrective rape an ethical practice?
• Should the issue of internalized homophobia be addressed?
• Internalized patriarchy and internalized homophobia, which one births one
• Should smoking weed be made legal?
• Why do the less privileged need free healthcare services
• A study of the effects of colonialism and internalized slavery
• Must aspiring journalists only focus on journalism courses?
• Addressing what it means to be of ethical behavior
• Should students be given a take-home assignment?
• Is there any academic relevance to assignments?
• Is access to free healthcare important?
• Does following the ethics code have abt social relevance?
• What role should developed countries play for developing countries?
• Is analysis writing an important aspect of literature?
• What role does ethics play in schools
• Should the address of global warming be continuous?
• Is there room for possible positive developments in global warming?
• Is the practice of ethics the same as moral teaching
• Should schools create sex education into their education curriculum

Comprehensive Ethics Debate Topics for Anyone

Just like the argumentative ethics topic, a debate topic on ethics centers majorly on choosing a part to argue for or against. This argument also is wrapped with evidence to support it. Your ethic topics can be on any subject. You can choose moral topics or any other topic with relevance. Here are some lists of ethical debate topics anyone can write on:

• Should the use of Contraceptives be promoted?
• Does legalizing weed make it any healthier?
• Should school children bring phones into school settings?
• The health impact of excessive engagement on social media
• Social relevance and importance of having ethical conducts
• Do companies with ethical conduct grow ahead
• Does ethics make a workplace safer?
• Are there importance on why sex education should be added to student’s
• Why safe abortion rights should be legalized
• Why the discrimination based on sexuality is harmful
• Why the practice of hedonism is important
• Sexual pleasure: Is it morally good?
• Is happiness dependent on an external factor?
• Why Institutionalized racism is the root cause of racism and racist beliefs
• Should the use of drugs be legalized?
• Is there any progressive importance to having a conservative view on things?
• Should social media apps allow explicit sexual content?
• Should social app builders have access to individual account
• Can homeschool match formal school training?
• Should the government ensure censorship measures?
• Is voting during elections the only form of patriotism?
• Is voting a patriotic display
• Are families allowed to have contradicting religious beliefs?
• Should state governments have any interference with the federal government?
• Should teenagers have access to contraceptives?

Good Ethical Research Papers for your Thesis or Dissertation

Writing either a thesis or a dissertation is a necessary part of academia. As a university student, you can’t graduate from only writing essays withiut writing your graduating thesis. There are so many areas your research paper about ethics can focus on. Here is a list of ethical topics:

• The contemporary relevance of applied ethics
• The psychological impacts of the proliferation of technology
• A Case Study of the legality of weed
• A multi-dimensional approach to the subject of marriage
• An ethical approach to the killing of animals
• A case study of the critical ethical debates on the use of contraception
• An analytical study of the relevance of ethical conduct in the workplace
• An investigation into the social relevance and importance of the beauty pageantry culture
• A critical study of normative ethics
• The role of applied ethics in the building of a healthy work culture
• An overview of the barriers associated with good leadership practice
• A Study of the importance of ethical practice in the healthcare system
• The study of ethics in business social responsibility
• An Overview on how Ethics promotes a saner working culture
• A look into how ethics promotes healthy social relationships
• The ethical relevance for Doctor and Patient Confidentiality
• Malpractice and Negligence an ethically challenging issue within the healthcare system
• The social and health relevance to access to free healthcare insurance
• A Study of the social relevance of ethics
• Violence: violence against animals is still abuse
• A look into strategic approaches to managing cyber crimes
• Ethic reasons for the separation of the church from politics
• Ethical Conduct: How Organizations with practicable ethics produces a toxic work environment
• A look into how Social media negatively impacts the IQ of a student
• The role of self-awareness and professional responsibility impacts social ethics in the workplace

Good Ethical Questions for Discussion

Primarily, ethics asks and answers the question of wrong or good. There are so many social issues that will make for good ethical questions for discussion. Here is a list of ethical questions for students to form insights from:

• How does ethics help to promote healthy workplace awareness?
• Does the practice of abortion negate morality?
• Is it right for a rape victim to be denied access to safe and free abortion?
• How do homophobia, racism, misogyny, and ableist practices hinder social growth?
• Should there be free access to condoms and contraceptive pills?
• Is free access to contraceptives better than the provision of menstrual materials
• How can racism be dismantled in an organization without consideration to institutionalized racism?
• How does the continuous promotion of capitalist concepts hinder societal progress?
• Does capitalism truly hinder social growth?
• Why should there be free access to contraceptive materials especially for women?
• What are the possible feasible solutions to the issue of climate change?
• Is it unethical not to share the wealth?
• Is engaging in warfare the right way to bring solutions?
• Does the use of makeup contradict the concept of beauty?
• Why are LGBTQ+ rights human rights?
• Is the legalization of cannabis ethical?
• Does the way you dress need to be the reason you are addressed a certain way?
• Are there moral problems that come with job automation?
• What can be done to combat the use of harmful substances
• Why should companies stop discriminating based on sex?
• What is the social relevance of providing workplace access?
• Why should parents and teachers stop flogging students?
• What is the distinction between discipline and strictness?
• Should religious beliefs be a dealbreaker in any relationship?

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Ethics in Research

Introduction.

Ethics in research play a vital role in ensuring the integrity, credibility, and moral responsibility of scholarly endeavors (Nichol et al., 2021). In an era where knowledge production is expanding rapidly, addressing the ethical considerations associated with research practices is imperative. This paper aims to provide a conceptual analysis of ethical principles typically related to data collection for action research. This paper aims to illustrate a broad comprehension of the ethical challenges that arise while devising and executing professional projects as a researcher paying close attention to how they relate specifically to the learners’ Capstone Project. Even though we are focusing primarily on this one project, wider ethical questions connected with data collection during the research will be discussed. Researchers must adhere to a set of ethics guidelines when collecting information, such as interacting fairly with participants, protecting collected data privacy, and transparently presenting findings. By exploring these rules thoroughly, credibility can be added by creating trustworthiness in research outcomes (Bitter et al., 2020). This study aims to dive into the nuances surrounding ethics concerns experienced by institutions while collecting information-based topics.

The thesis statement of this paper asserts that understanding and incorporating ethical principles in research is essential for all professionals at the doctoral level. By examining the ethical issues within data collection for action research and relating them to the learner’s Capstone Project, we aim to underscore the significance of ethical research practices and their impact on the validity and reliability of research outcomes. Through this exploration into ethics in research, academics will develop a heightened awareness and understanding of ethical complexities. By upholding ethical standards within their fields of study, researchers play a vital role in promoting participant protection and transparency while advancing knowledge through integrity.

Overview of Ethical Principles in Research

Research ethics are grounded in fundamental principles that guide researchers in their interactions with subjects, management of data communication of results, and overall conduct. Adherence to these ethical guidelines is essential to ensure the trustworthiness and legitimacy of research outcomes. To be responsible researchers, we must adhere to a set of ethical principles designed explicitly for maintaining participant safety respecting human dignity, and pursuing truthful inquiry. According to Bitter et al.s (2020) explanation, these guidelines play an integral role in helping us do our work with integrity while furthering our collective pursuit for knowledge advancement within academic fields.

The importance of ethical considerations in data collection for research must be considered. One critical principle is informed consent. It involves obtaining voluntary agreement from study participants with full comprehension of their involvement regarding risks versus benefits while showing them respect as autonomous individuals free to choose whether or not they participate actively in such studies. It’s imperative not only ethically but also practically, given public concerns over privacy breaches due to unethical behavior involving sensitive data.

The ethical principles of confidentiality and privacy hold a significant place in the process of data collection. Safeguarding personally identifiable information through secure handling techniques is vital for protecting participants’ rights (Bitter et al., 2020). Honoring these principles strengthens trust between all parties involved in research studies.

Research ethics also involves considering important principles such as maximizing participant advantage while minimizing potential harm in accordance with beneficence regulations (Bitter et al., 2020). While conducting studies with human subjects or patients, researchers must consider numerous factors that impact participants safety. Therefore, they must provide necessary assistance in response to any issues arising during the study period.

Additionally, the principle of justice emphasizes fairness and equity in research. Regarding research, justice is a crucial principle that emphasizes the importance of fairness and equity. For researchers, this means carefully choosing participants based on sound criteria and avoiding any unfair exclusion or burden (Bitter et al., 2020). Adhering to these principles can promote inclusivity, equality, and fairness in our research practices.

Research integrity is also a vital ethical principle. Honesty, accuracy, and transparency are paramount in maintaining research integrity as an essential ethical principle within scientific research. Accomplishing this requires adherence to rigid scientific rigor during the whole process while representing findings truthfully without any fabrication or plagiarism (Mejlgaard et al., 2020).

Research studies can only be conducted with upholding ethical standards such as informed consent and participant privacy protection. Consent forms state pertinent information while dialogue deepens understanding ahead of participation decisions being taken. Stringent measures such as pseudonym usage and anonymization of data signify a commitment to safeguarding sensitive material, while strict storage systems restrict access to personal information protection. To promote goodwill, researchers may implement measures such as monitoring participants’ well-being, providing necessary support services, and conducting risk assessments to minimize potential harm. The principle of justice is addressed by ensuring diverse and representative participant samples, avoiding discriminatory practices, and considering the fair distribution of research benefits.

At the heart of scientific inquiry lies research integrity. It requires that researchers adhere to rigorous design processes with precise data collection and analysis while maintaining transparency in sharing their outcomes. Professional associations and institutions provide well-established ethical guidelines that safeguard consistency across all areas of academic research practices with a common standard of professionalism upheld by all researchers.

Ethical Issues in Data Collection for Action Research

As researchers gather data in preparation for action-based research projects, several ethical considerations come up requiring attention and caution towards its management. One vital issue demanding awareness is obtaining informed consent from voluntary participants in accordance with ethical guidelines. Respect for individual autonomy requires that all concerned parties understand detailed information about the study’s goals, procedures, possible risks, and benefits (Salazar, 2022). It is worth noting that external influencers or power dynamics sometimes determine participants’ voluntariness. Nonetheless, a balance must be maintained to ensure voluntary participation through informed consent.

Respecting privacy and maintaining confidentiality is paramount in research ethics. It becomes a researcher’s responsibility to safeguard their participant’s personal information and identity by adopting necessary measures like anonymity to prevent breaches. This task becomes demanding when dealing with sensitive data or small participant groups as the risk of unintentional disclosure increases, leading to trust violations or harm (Salazar, 2022).

In research ethics adhering to the principle of beneficence requires striking an ethical balance that can present challenges for researchers. While seeking meaningful results from their studies, they must be mindful of potential harms that may arise for study participants. Careful consideration must therefore be taken when weighing risks against benefits while prioritizing participant well-being to make sound ethical decisions throughout every stage of research conduct.

Additionally, the principle of justice raises ethical considerations in action research. Researchers must ensure fair and equitable access to participation, avoiding the exclusion or overburdening of particular individuals or groups (Salazar, 2022). However, achieving accurate equity can be challenging, as certain populations may need more representation in research studies, potentially resulting in biased or incomplete findings.

The potential challenges and dilemmas related to these ethical issues in data collection for action research can be multifaceted. One challenge is obtaining genuinely informed consent. Participants may need to fully understand the research implications, risks, or benefits, which can compromise their ability to provide genuine informed consent (Salazar, 2022). Moreover, power dynamics between researchers and participants can create a sense of obligation or coercion, making it challenging for participants to make autonomous decisions.

Maintaining confidentiality and privacy poses dilemmas as well. Striking a balance between data protection and meaningful analysis can be challenging, mainly when research findings rely on detailed and specific participant information. Researchers must carefully navigate the tension between data anonymization and the need for meaningful results, considering the potential risks of re-identification and unintended consequences.

The principle of beneficence raises dilemmas regarding the potential harm participants may face. Researchers must carefully assess and mitigate risks, but determining the threshold of acceptable risk can be subjective and context-dependent (Salazar, 2022). Striving for meaningful change through action research may involve engaging participants in potentially uncomfortable or sensitive experiences and raising ethical concerns about the potential psychological or emotional impact on participants.

Achieving justice in action research can be a complex challenge. Ensuring fair representation and equitable participation can be hindered by practical limitations, such as limited resources, access barriers, or marginalized groups’ underrepresentation. Researchers must critically examine the potential biases and inequalities that may exist within their research design and strive to address and minimize them.

When investigating through action-based research methods, respecting ethical guidelines regarding data collection proves critical to establishing accurate findings. It is important to obtain voluntary and informed consent from subjects participating in such studies to ensure their reliability and adherence to established ethical principles. Moreover, such failure can impact engagement levels among subjects, thus generating biased outcomes that fail objective analysis.

The significance of protecting confidentiality rights concerning scientific studies must be considered, as failing to do so can significantly affect research validity and reliability. Breaching confidentiality can strain relationships between researchers and patients, leading to inaccurate or missing data (Salazar, 2022). Participants may hold back valuable insights or refrain from participating fully in such studies due to concerns about possible violations resulting in less thorough findings.

Literature Review on Ethical Considerations in Professional Projects

When we are working on professional projects, we must prioritize ethical considerations. Ensuring that we act responsibly and in line with ethical standards is paramount. This section gives an overview of the literature that explores the significance of ethical thinking in project work. Numerous studies and scholarly works have highlighted the ethical issues commonly encountered in professional projects across various disciplines. Researchers have emphasized the importance of upholding moral principles to maintain the integrity and credibility of professional projects.

 Key ethical issues commonly encountered in professional projects include:

Conflicts of Interest

In today’s professional landscape, where various parties with different interests often come together for a common goal, researchers must understand how conflicts of interest can cloud judgment and impede progress. As such, it becomes necessary for them to demonstrate due diligence in identifying potential situations where their objectivity may be compromised by personal or financial stakes- something that could undermine public trust in their work if not handled properly (OHRP, 2018). By recognizing these issues early on and taking decisive measures to manage these complex situations while ensuring transparency at every step forward, researchers can reinforce their credibility while maintaining the high ethical standards required for successful research outcomes.

Data Privacy and Security

When taking on certain projects professionally, there may be instances where sensitive information is required for collection or analysis purposes. As responsible individuals working with such material, utmost priority should always be given to ensuring its privacy and security so that both confidentiality standards are met while keeping people’s rights intact (Pietilä et al., 2020). It is crucial that all ethical considerations, such as obtaining informed consent before gathering such materials or using only secure storage options, are practiced while following related data protection laws at all times.

Intellectual Property Rights

Professional endeavors that incorporate inventive concepts or proprietary information may pose intellectual property challenges down the road. Researchers must honor copyrights and patents when creating new materials. By properly acknowledging existing intellectual property rights, we can ensure ethical conduct throughout our endeavors.

Bias and Fairness

Bias can influence decision-making and project outcomes. Researchers must strive for objectivity, fairness, and inclusivity in their projects, avoiding discriminatory practices and ensuring equitable access and opportunities for all stakeholders (Pietilä et al., 2020). Transparency in decision-making processes and unbiased data analysis contribute to the integrity of professional projects.

Stakeholder Engagement and Communication

Ethical considerations extend to engaging stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle. Inclusive and transparent communication ensures stakeholders’ understanding, active participation, and involvement in decision-making processes. Respectful and open communication facilitates ethical collaboration and builds trust among project participants.

Application of Ethical Issues to the Capstone Project

When it comes to carrying out my Capstone Project ethically and responsibly, it’s crucially important to be mindful of specific challenges. Having examined various pieces of literature surrounding the subject matter, some key ethical considerations have emerged as particularly salient in professional projects: safeguarding the confidentiality, ensuring consent is informed and meaningful for all parties involved, and avoiding conflicts of interest where feasible. Even in contexts where learners aren’t interacting with living beings directly through their own work toward a Capstone Project goal, it’s still entirely possible for these same challenges to arise.

In my Capstone Project, conflicts of interest arise when multiple stakeholders have varying expectations or agendas. I should therefore identify potential conflicts and develop strategies to address them, such as transparent decision-making processes or recusal protocols for individuals with significant conflicts.

Data privacy and security are relevant considerations if the Capstone Project involves collecting or analyzing sensitive information. I should therefore outline procedures for obtaining informed consent, ensuring data encryption and storage security, and implementing appropriate data anonymization techniques to protect participants’ privacy.

Intellectual property rights should be respected in the Capstone Project. I have to review existing patents, copyrights, or trademarks and ensure compliance with relevant laws. Proper attribution and acknowledgment of intellectual property from other sources should be incorporated, and any new intellectual property generated should be appropriately protected.

To mitigate bias and promote fairness, I should take measures to minimize personal preferences and ensure diverse perspectives are included in decision-making processes. Transparency and documentation of the decision-making rationale can contribute to fairness and accountability. I also have to implement rigorous and objective data analysis techniques to minimize the influence of biases on project outcomes.

Stakeholder engagement and communication are crucial aspects of the Capstone Project’s ethical considerations. I should develop a clear communication plan that fosters open and inclusive dialogue with stakeholders, ensuring their involvement and understanding throughout the project. Regular updates, feedback mechanisms, and opportunities for stakeholder input can enhance ethical collaboration and trust.

In conclusion, this paper has explored the importance of ethical considerations in research and professional projects, specifically focusing on the context of action research and the learner’s Capstone Project. Studying ethical principles within research laid the groundwork for comprehending key challenges during data collection. Specifically, honing in on these issues within action research illuminated potential obstacles that demand attention from researchers. Such blocks hold sway over both the validity and reliability of subsequent findings. The literature review on ethical considerations in professional projects highlighted the relevance of ethical issues such as conflicts of interest, data privacy and security, intellectual property rights, bias and fairness, and stakeholder engagement. Applying these ethical issues to the learner’s Capstone Project involved recognizing their relevance and developing strategies to address and mitigate them. We must prioritize ethical considerations when conducting research or professional projects. Upholding ethical standards helps us maintain our integrity and credibility in our work, protects participant rights, promotes inclusivity amongst groups, and produces valid findings.

Achieving a doctorate degree requires a deep understanding of ethical principles in academia. Doctoral researchers are exemplary figures who lead by example within their respective fields. This leadership serves as a conduit for advancing knowledge while promoting responsible research practices through ethical behavior models. As such, ethics should be integrated throughout the core curriculum, from doctoral studies to professional development activities.

Bitter, C. C., Ngabirano, A. A., Simon, E. L., & Taylor, D. M. (2020). Principles of research ethics: A research primer for low-and middle-income countries.  African Journal of Emergency Medicine ,  10 , S125-S129.

Mejlgaard, N., Bouter, L. M., Gaskell, G., Kavouras, P., Allum, N., Bendtsen, A. K., … & Veltri, G. A. (2020). Research integrity: nine ways to move from talk to walk.  Nature ,  586 (7829), 358-360.

Nichol, A. A., Mwaka, E. S., & Luyckx, V. A. (2021, May). Ethics in Research: Relevance for Nephrology. In  Seminars in Nephrology  (Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 272-281). WB Saunders.

Salazar, C. (2022). Participatory action research with and for undocumented college students: Ethical challenges and methodological opportunities.  Qualitative Research ,  22 (3), 369-386.

Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) (2018): Read the Belmont Report |HHS.gov.

https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy.

Pietilä, A. M., Nurmi, S. M., Halkoaho, A., & Kyngäs, H. (2020). Qualitative research: Ethical considerations.  The application of content analysis in nursing science research , 49-69.

Sawai, T., Hayashi, Y., Niikawa, T., Shepherd, J., Thomas, E., Lee, T. L., … & Sakaguchi, H. (2022). Mapping the ethical issues of brain organoid research and application.  AJOB Neuroscience ,  13 (2), 81-94.

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The Code of Ethics aims to guide the NeurIPS community towards higher standards of ethical conduct as it pertains to elements of research ethics and the broader societal and environmental impact of research submitted to NeurIPS. It outlines conference expectations about the ethical practices that must be adopted by the submitting authors, members of the program and organizing committees. The Code of Ethics complements the NeurIPS Code of Conduct , which focuses on professional conduct and research integrity issues, including plagiarism, fraud and reproducibility concerns. The points described below also inform the NeurIPS Submission Checklist, which outlines more concrete communication requirements. 

Potential Harms Caused by the Research Process 

Research involving human subjects or participants:

• Fair Wages: all human research subjects or participants must receive appropriate compensation. If you make use of crowdsourcing or contract work for a particular task as part of your research project,  you must respect the minimum hourly rate in the region where the work is carried out.
• Research involving human participants: if the research presented involves direct interactions between the researchers and human participants or between a technical system and human participants, authors are required to follow existing protocols in their institutions (e.g. human subject research accreditation, IRB) and go through the relevant process. In cases when no formal process exists, they can undergo an equivalent informal process (e.g. via their peers or an internal ethics review).

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The points listed below apply to all datasets used for submissions, both for publicly available data and internal datasets.

• Privacy: Datasets should minimize the exposure of any personally identifiable information, unless informed consent from those individuals is provided to do so. 
• Consent: Any paper that chooses to create a dataset with real data of real people should ask for the explicit consent of participants, or explain why they were unable to do so.
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Societal Impact and Potential Harmful Consequences

Authors should transparently communicate the known or anticipated consequences of research: for instance via the paper checklist or a separate section in a submission.

The following specific areas are of particular concern:

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• Discrimination: Researchers should consider whether the technology they developed can be used to discriminate, exclude, or otherwise negatively impact people, including impacts on the provision of services such as healthcare, education or access to credit.  
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We propose some reflection and actions taken to mitigate potential harmful consequences from the research project. 

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• Secure and privacy-preserving data storage & distribution : Authors should leverage privacy protocols, encryption and anonymization to reduce the risk of data leakage or theft. Stronger measures should be employed for more sensitive data (e.g., biometric or medical data). 
• Responsible release and publication strategy: Models that have a high risk for misuse or dual-use should be released with necessary safeguards to allow for controlled use of the model, e.g. by requiring that users adhere to a code of conduct to access the model. Authors of papers exposing a security vulnerability in a system should follow the responsible disclosure procedures of the system owners.
• Allowing access to research artifacts: When releasing research artifacts, it is important to make accessible the information required to understand these artifacts (e.g. the code, execution environment versions, weights, and hyperparameters of systems) to enable external scrutiny and auditing.
• Disclose essential elements for reproducibility: Any work submitted to NeurIPS should be accompanied by the information sufficient for the reproduction of results described. This can include the code, data, model weights, and/or a description of the computational resources needed to train the proposed model or validate the results.
• Ensure legal compliance: Ensure adequate awareness of regional legal requirements. This can be done, for instance, by consulting with law school clinics specializing in intellectual property and technology issues. Additional information is required from authors where legal compliance could not be met due to human rights violations (e.g. freedom of expression, the right to work and education, bodily autonomy, etc.). 

Violations to the Code of Ethics should be reported to [email protected] . NeurIPS reserves the right to reject the presentation of scientific works that violate the Code of Ethics. Notice that conference contributors are also obliged to adhere to additional ethical codes or review requirements arising from other stakeholders such as funders and research institutions.

Further reading

UNDERSTANDING LICENSES

• Towards Standardization of Data Licenses: The Montreal Data License
• Behavioral Use Licensing for Responsible AI  
• Choose an open source license  

MODEL AND DATA DOCUMENTATION TEMPLATES

• Model Cards for Model Reporting
• Datasheets for Datasets
• Using AI Factsheets for AI Governance
• ML Lifecycle Documentation Practices

SOCIETAL IMPACT

• Safety: Key Concepts in AI Safety: An Overview
• Security: SoK: Security and Privacy in Machine Learning
• Discrimination:  Bias in algorithms – Artificial intelligence and discrimination ; What about fairness, bias and discrimination?
• Surveillance: The Human Right to Privacy in the Digital Age
• Deception & Harassment: Generative Language Models and Automated Influence Operations: Emerging Threats and Potential Mitigations  
• Environment: Quantifying the Carbon Emissions of Machine Learning  
• Human Rights: Technology and Rights | Human Rights Watch  
• Bias and fairness:  Fairness and machine learning  
• Dual use problem:  Dual use of artificial-intelligence-powered drug discovery 
• Data Enrichment: Responsible Sourcing for Data Enrichment
• Synthetic Media: PAI’s Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media

RELATED ENDEAVORS

• ACM Code of Ethics  
• ACL Ethics FAQ
• ICLR Code of Ethics
• Responsible Conduct of Research Training  

RELATED RESEARCH COMMUNITIES

• IEEE SaTML 2023
• Aies Conference
• FORC 2022  

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• Knowledge Base
• Methodology
• Ethical Considerations in Research | Types & Examples

Ethical Considerations in Research | Types & Examples

Published on 7 May 2022 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on 6 July 2024.

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from people.

The goals of human research often include understanding real-life phenomena, studying effective treatments, investigating behaviours, and improving lives in other ways. What you decide to research and how you conduct that research involve key ethical considerations.

These considerations work to:

• Protect the rights of research participants
• Enhance research validity
• Maintain scientific integrity

Table of contents

Why do research ethics matter, getting ethical approval for your study, types of ethical issues, voluntary participation, informed consent, confidentiality, potential for harm, results communication, examples of ethical failures, frequently asked questions about research ethics.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe for research subjects.

You’ll balance pursuing important research aims with using ethical research methods and procedures. It’s always necessary to prevent permanent or excessive harm to participants, whether inadvertent or not.

Defying research ethics will also lower the credibility of your research because it’s hard for others to trust your data if your methods are morally questionable.

Even if a research idea is valuable to society, it doesn’t justify violating the human rights or dignity of your study participants.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

Before you start any study involving data collection with people, you’ll submit your research proposal to an institutional review board (IRB) .

An IRB is a committee that checks whether your research aims and research design are ethically acceptable and follow your institution’s code of conduct. They check that your research materials and procedures are up to code.

If successful, you’ll receive IRB approval, and you can begin collecting data according to the approved procedures. If you want to make any changes to your procedures or materials, you’ll need to submit a modification application to the IRB for approval.

If unsuccessful, you may be asked to re-submit with modifications or your research proposal may receive a rejection. To get IRB approval, it’s important to explicitly note how you’ll tackle each of the ethical issues that may arise in your study.

There are several ethical issues you should always pay attention to in your research design, and these issues can overlap with each other.

You’ll usually outline ways you’ll deal with each issue in your research proposal if you plan to collect data from participants.

Voluntary participation means that all research subjects are free to choose to participate without any pressure or coercion.

All participants are able to withdraw from, or leave, the study at any point without feeling an obligation to continue. Your participants don’t need to provide a reason for leaving the study.

It’s important to make it clear to participants that there are no negative consequences or repercussions to their refusal to participate. After all, they’re taking the time to help you in the research process, so you should respect their decisions without trying to change their minds.

Voluntary participation is an ethical principle protected by international law and many scientific codes of conduct.

Take special care to ensure there’s no pressure on participants when you’re working with vulnerable groups of people who may find it hard to stop the study even when they want to.

Informed consent refers to a situation in which all potential participants receive and understand all the information they need to decide whether they want to participate. This includes information about the study’s benefits, risks, funding, and institutional approval.

• What the study is about
• The risks and benefits of taking part
• How long the study will take
• Your supervisor’s contact information and the institution’s approval number

Usually, you’ll provide participants with a text for them to read and ask them if they have any questions. If they agree to participate, they can sign or initial the consent form. Note that this may not be sufficient for informed consent when you work with particularly vulnerable groups of people.

If you’re collecting data from people with low literacy, make sure to verbally explain the consent form to them before they agree to participate.

For participants with very limited English proficiency, you should always translate the study materials or work with an interpreter so they have all the information in their first language.

In research with children, you’ll often need informed permission for their participation from their parents or guardians. Although children cannot give informed consent, it’s best to also ask for their assent (agreement) to participate, depending on their age and maturity level.

Anonymity means that you don’t know who the participants are and you can’t link any individual participant to their data.

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information – for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, and videos.

In many cases, it may be impossible to truly anonymise data collection. For example, data collected in person or by phone cannot be considered fully anonymous because some personal identifiers (demographic information or phone numbers) are impossible to hide.

You’ll also need to collect some identifying information if you give your participants the option to withdraw their data at a later stage.

Data pseudonymisation is an alternative method where you replace identifying information about participants with pseudonymous, or fake, identifiers. The data can still be linked to participants, but it’s harder to do so because you separate personal information from the study data.

Confidentiality means that you know who the participants are, but you remove all identifying information from your report.

All participants have a right to privacy, so you should protect their personal data for as long as you store or use it. Even when you can’t collect data anonymously, you should secure confidentiality whenever you can.

Some research designs aren’t conducive to confidentiality, but it’s important to make all attempts and inform participants of the risks involved.

As a researcher, you have to consider all possible sources of harm to participants. Harm can come in many different forms.

• Psychological harm: Sensitive questions or tasks may trigger negative emotions such as shame or anxiety.
• Social harm: Participation can involve social risks, public embarrassment, or stigma.
• Physical harm: Pain or injury can result from the study procedures.
• Legal harm: Reporting sensitive data could lead to legal risks or a breach of privacy.

It’s best to consider every possible source of harm in your study, as well as concrete ways to mitigate them. Involve your supervisor to discuss steps for harm reduction.

Make sure to disclose all possible risks of harm to participants before the study to get informed consent. If there is a risk of harm, prepare to provide participants with resources, counselling, or medical services if needed.

Some of these questions may bring up negative emotions, so you inform participants about the sensitive nature of the survey and assure them that their responses will be confidential.

The way you communicate your research results can sometimes involve ethical issues. Good science communication is honest, reliable, and credible. It’s best to make your results as transparent as possible.

Take steps to actively avoid plagiarism and research misconduct wherever possible.

Plagiarism means submitting others’ works as your own. Although it can be unintentional, copying someone else’s work without proper credit amounts to stealing. It’s an ethical problem in research communication because you may benefit by harming other researchers.

Self-plagiarism is when you republish or re-submit parts of your own papers or reports without properly citing your original work.

This is problematic because you may benefit from presenting your ideas as new and original even though they’ve already been published elsewhere in the past. You may also be infringing on your previous publisher’s copyright, violating an ethical code, or wasting time and resources by doing so.

In extreme cases of self-plagiarism, entire datasets or papers are sometimes duplicated. These are major ethical violations because they can skew research findings if taken as original data.

You notice that two published studies have similar characteristics even though they are from different years. Their sample sizes, locations, treatments, and results are highly similar, and the studies share one author in common.

Research misconduct

Research misconduct means making up or falsifying data, manipulating data analyses, or misrepresenting results in research reports. It’s a form of academic fraud.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement about data analyses.

Research misconduct is a serious ethical issue because it can undermine scientific integrity and institutional credibility. It leads to a waste of funding and resources that could have been used for alternative research.

Later investigations revealed that they fabricated and manipulated their data to show a nonexistent link between vaccines and autism. Wakefield also neglected to disclose important conflicts of interest, and his medical license was taken away.

This fraudulent work sparked vaccine hesitancy among parents and caregivers. The rate of MMR vaccinations in children fell sharply, and measles outbreaks became more common due to a lack of herd immunity.

Research scandals with ethical failures are littered throughout history, but some took place not that long ago.

Some scientists in positions of power have historically mistreated or even abused research participants to investigate research problems at any cost. These participants were prisoners, under their care, or otherwise trusted them to treat them with dignity.

To demonstrate the importance of research ethics, we’ll briefly review two research studies that violated human rights in modern history.

These experiments were inhumane and resulted in trauma, permanent disabilities, or death in many cases.

After some Nazi doctors were put on trial for their crimes, the Nuremberg Code of research ethics for human experimentation was developed in 1947 to establish a new standard for human experimentation in medical research.

In reality, the actual goal was to study the effects of the disease when left untreated, and the researchers never informed participants about their diagnoses or the research aims.

Although participants experienced severe health problems, including blindness and other complications, the researchers only pretended to provide medical care.

When treatment became possible in 1943, 11 years after the study began, none of the participants were offered it, despite their health conditions and high risk of death.

Ethical failures like these resulted in severe harm to participants, wasted resources, and lower trust in science and scientists. This is why all research institutions have strict ethical guidelines for performing research.

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. These principles include voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, potential for harm, and results communication.

Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from others .

These considerations protect the rights of research participants, enhance research validity , and maintain scientific integrity.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe.

Anonymity means you don’t know who the participants are, while confidentiality means you know who they are but remove identifying information from your research report. Both are important ethical considerations .

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information – for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, or videos.

You can keep data confidential by using aggregate information in your research report, so that you only refer to groups of participants rather than individuals.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement but a serious ethical failure.

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Ethics Topics for Research Papers: 140+ Ideas

Derived from the Greek word “ethos,” meaning “way of living,” ethics is a branch of philosophy that involves well-founded standards of right and wrong, as well as just and unjust behaviors. By defining concepts such as right, wrong, vice, justice, and crime, ethics examines an individual’s behavior in society.

When writing an ethics research paper, the first step is to come up with an appropriate ethics topic. Framing a research project on ethics requires understanding essential principles like honesty, morals, and integrity, and demonstrating the findings needed to support your hypothesis. This fundamental research can be challenging for many students, particularly those who have chosen complex research topics. Therefore, the first step is brainstorming excellent ethical topics to transform this challenging process into a smooth journey.

With this in mind, we are here to help ease this burden. This blog post compiles over 140+ captivating ethics topics across various disciplines. Each of these topics will assist you in writing a persuasive research paper that will captivate your readers and impress your professors.

Table of Contents

Ethics Comes in a Variety of Forms

Over the centuries, different philosophers have proposed numerous ethical theories. Before diving into the ethical topics that we have categorized, it is crucial to understand the various types of ethics. Ethics can be broadly classified into four branches, as follows:

Descriptive ethics: This branch of ethics deals with the theory that explains the moral norms, attitudes, and practices that societies believe to be right or wrong. It examines how people actually behave and the moral standards they claim to follow.

Normative or prescriptive ethics: The study of “norms” or “principles” that determine what is morally right or wrong and accordingly holds individuals accountable. In simpler terms, this is the study of “ethical actions.” Deontological ethics, virtue ethics, consequentialism, and Nishkam Karmayoga are some examples of normative theories.

Meta-ethics: Meta-ethics studies the nature of ethics as a whole. This branch of ethics analyzes the foundations of our ethical principles and why we use them daily. It involves the investigation of the meaning and justification of moral claims, as well as the nature of moral values and properties.

Applied ethics: This is the most practical branch of ethics. Applied ethics involves the general principles that we apply in our daily lives. This branch deals with the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of specific issues in various fields, such as medicine, business, and the environment.

Selecting the Right Research Topic in Ethics

To create an engaging research paper, the initial step is to select a high-quality research topic that will make your research stand out from the crowd. To score excellent grades, you must develop captivating ethics topics of your choice. Here are a few tips that will help you choose the best option among all the ethics paper topics:

• When framing an ethical research paper, consider choosing a research topic with enough supporting facts, evidence, and details. Avoid any false or fabricated data, as it can ruin the credibility of your paper.
• Select topics involving complex on-going issues or moral quandaries, as they would pique the interest of your professors. Look for topics that are occasionally covered by the media.
• Try to write your research concisely, making it interesting, informative, and relevant. Overly long research is a major turnoff for readers.
• Search for unsolved research paradigms that will allow you to include your opinions and arguments.
• Engage in critical thinking on the best topics. Narrow down some of the best topics that spark your and your readers’ interests and will expand their knowledge.

Identifying the perfect topic that suits all your requirements can be challenging. You can use the tips mentioned above to identify the best topics that meet your needs. However, depending on individual students, this process can still be time-consuming. Instead of brainstorming for hours, delving into research, and writing lengthy research papers , you can seek professional assistance from our research paper writers.

140+ Ethics Topics for Research Papers

Crafting a research paper on ethics can be more challenging than it initially appears. This is because, while most people understand basic ethical values, their interpretations can vary significantly. Ethics is not just about black and white; it delves much deeper into the shades of grey. In this article, our experts from Edumagnate.com have provided you with an extensive list of ethics topics to help jumpstart your research paper. For a better understanding, we recommend reading through each list thoroughly.

Compelling Topics on Ethical Issues

Ethical dilemmas arise when individuals must evaluate whether their actions are morally right. Topics related to such dilemmas often explore complex questions, requiring one to defend their position convincingly. These ethical issues span various fields, including religion, psychology, and sociology. Consequently, incorporating perspectives from these disciplines can help create a unique and insightful research paper.

• Ethical Codes for Sports Refereeing
• Ethical issues in animal research
• The ethical issues with euthanasia
• Ethical Issues in Sports Administration
• Legal Ethics in National and international businesses
• Organizational Ethics and Individual Responsibility
• Understanding sports ethics as a significant tool for accessing moral behavior in sports
• The Ethical Challenges and Controversies of Healthcare Reform
• The Challenge of Terri Schiavo from an ethical perspective
• The Ethical Issues of Pharmaceutical Companies
• Ethical Issues with Abortion
• Sports ethics: use of drugs in sports competition
• Healthcare systems and associated healthcare ethics
• Ethical and cultural issues with group work
• Political and socioeconomic issues amongst different nations
• Religion and Ethics in healthcare provisions
• Ethical Issues and Concerns of a professional sports person
• The ethical side of Motorsports
• The foundation of computer ethics

Since ethics is a branch of philosophy, students can also consider choosing philosophy research topics.

Social Media Business Ethics Topics

To make things easier, our experts have enumerated a list of the most interesting social media business ethics topics for you. These topics are thoroughly reviewed in depth to ensure optimum results for students. Check them out!

• An Introduction to social media ethics
• Is the notion of “controversial fit” on social media ethical?
• Enhancing business performance on social media without eroding business ethics
• The ethical judgment of consumers and controversial advertising avoidance on social media
• Managing ethical responses on social media: effective guidance for business entrepreneurs
• The ethical environment in online communities: information credibility from a social media standpoint
• Employing big data in business organizations and business ethics
• Social media business ethics: a view from the trenches
• Corporate Firing for sharing questionable social media posts: a detailed analysis
• What is the role of social media ethics in achieving responsible business?
• The Influence of social media ethics on Enhancing the effective online presence of Businesses
• The Influence of social media ethics in the ongoing industries
• Social media ethics and Etiquette
• The Impact of social media ethics on Businesses
• The Ethical Issues of Colonizing Mars
• Social media ethics and journalism: a detailed analysis
• The ethical implications of social media: issues and recommendations for entrepreneurs

The Best Bio-Medical Ethics Topics

If you’re interested in bio-medical, then consider choosing a research topic from the following list of suggestions:

• A detailed analysis of the relationship between medical ethics and religious beliefs
• Medical Ethics in Asia versus Europe
• Medical ethics: a detailed analysis
• Ethical Issues in stem cell research and Therapy
• The ethical issues and legal considerations with euthanasia
• Ethical behavioral issues and Problems in Medicine
• A detailed analysis for monitoring the application of idol ethics in medical fields
• The ethical challenges and Considerations for practicing medicine overseas
• Ethical Considerations for the Inclusion of pregnant women as research participants
• How do medical ethics confront religious beliefs?
• Bio-ethics versus medical ethics: a comparative analysis
• Contemporary medical ethics: a research analysis of Iran
• Ethical issues, including bioethics (conduct a case study)
• Principles of bio-medical ethics
• Human testing of drugs: is it ethical?
• Debunking the Ethics of Neuroenhancement
• The imperativeness of medical ethics
• The perception of biomedical ethics
• The Ethics of Development: an integral Approach

Read Also – Interesting biology research topics

Bioethics Research Paper Topics

Bioethics talks about topics related to health, life, genetics, neurology, and even plastic surgery. Research paper topics in bioethics are brilliant topics to write about. The following list is a compilation of 20 bioethics research paper topics that you can consider:

• Ethical conflicts over disclosure and barring services
• Bioethics: Why is philosophy essential for progress?
• Contemporary Issues in Bioethics
• A critical understanding of the ethical responsibilities associated with CRISPR
• Bioethics and stem cell research
• 5 strange and sinister medical procedures from History
• Bioethics and political ideology: The case of active voluntary euthanasia
• Availability of vaccines for everyone: an overview
• The ethics of brain-boosting
• Euthanasia: An Overview and the Jewish Perspective
• The legal and ethical considerations of dealing with a brain-dead person
• A descriptive analysis of Bioethics in Society
• Ethics and genetic engineering—lessons to learn
• Islam and bioethics: Beyond abortion and euthanasia
• Exploring the ethical principles and Practice of plastic surgery
• Pediatric neuroenhancement: ethical, legal, social, and neurodevelopmental implications
• Bioethics, disability, and death: Uncovering cultural bias in the euthanasia debate
• Secular Bioethics and Euthanasia in a democratic public space

Read Also – 200+ Science Research Topics

Medical Ethics Topics to Score Excellent Grades

The list of medical ethics topics below can assist you with some of these amazing medical ethics topics. For a better understanding, consider reading each topic among these recommendations:

• Is physician-assisted suicide legal? Is it ethical?
• The ethical and legal issues with surrogacy
• The Ethical and Medical Implications of Circumcision
• The Ethics of Surrogacy
• The ethics of abortion: Is it ethically right?
• Ethical and policy issues associated with uterine transplants
• Ethical considerations associated with living donations: an overview
• The Ethics of Condemned Prisoner Organ Donation
• Ethical theories and laws associated with medical ethics
• The Ethics of employing human embryos in genetic engineering research
• Medical ethics dilemma: an overview
• The ethical perspectives of the Nightingale pledge
• The ethics of animal research
• Current ethical issues and Challenges in Healthcare
• Religion, beliefs, and medical ethics: an overview
• Bioethics, human rights, and childbirth
• Understanding Morality without ethics

Enthralling Computing Ethics Topics

Technological advancements have revolutionized all facets of human existence. Computer ethics encompass a collection of fundamental principles aimed at addressing concerns associated with the improper use of computers and outlining preventive measures. The list provided below features some of the most compelling ethical research topics in the realm of computer ethics.

• Should ethics boards be required for IT companies?
• Discussing the risks associated with keeping sensitive data online.
• Is hacking a moral act?
• Examine the ethical issues raised by artificial intelligence.
• Exploring computer privacy-related problems and their solutions
• The moral dilemmas associated with drone use
• Evaluating the moral implications of internet users’ Anonymity
• Ethical prevention of cyberbullying: What can be done for a permanent termination?
• Sabotaging others’ computers: how is this ethically wrong?
• Mapping the foundationalist debate in computer ethics
• A method in computer ethics: Towards a multi-level interdisciplinary approach
• Computer ethics: the significance of personal, formal, and informal codes
• Gender and computer ethics
• Reasons, relativity, and Responsibility in computer ethics
• The Ethics of Computing: A Survey of the computing-oriented Literature
• Computer Ethics and moral methodology
• The ethics of online Anonymity or Zuckerberg vs.” Moot.”
• Propose an educational plan for computer ethics and information security

Research Paper Topics in Sports Ethics

Sports ethics extend beyond mere behavior and thought processes, as they are fundamentally rooted in respect, fairness, integrity, and responsibility within the sports arena. Athletes often face dilemmas regarding what actions to take or avoid due to the ethical considerations in sports. Although this subject can be complex, a deep understanding allows for exceptional research on sports ethics. Here are some example topics:

• Sports Ethics: An Anthology
• Ethics in sports
• Performance-enhancing drugs in sport: The ethical issue
• The key components of sports ethics
• The primary moral obligations of athletes
• The imperativeness of ethics in sports
• A detailed analysis of the ethical responsibilities of a sportsperson
• Are professional sporting activities moral in today’s society?
• The Paralympic Games and the Promotion of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
• Athletes’ healthcare and ethical Concerns
• Impact of ethical behavior outside the Pitch
• The moral dimensions of Motorsports
• Child exploitation to become elite athletes
• Moral and ethical responsibilities of a sportsperson
• How do people enter the world of professional sports, and what ethical issues do they face?
• Alienation of sports from real life
• How sports and games serve as the primary outlet for human ethics
• Sports ethics and medicine
• The unique ethics of sports medicine

Top-Notch Business Ethics Topics

Your ethics paper topic on business must be engaging and provide a practical solution to the ongoing economic challenges. Here is a compilation of some of the best business ethical topics for research papers. Each topic on this list will allow you to draft an excellent research paper and earn brilliant grades. Read on.

• Roots of business ethics in Psychology
• A Model of business ethics
• A detailed study of the ethical philosophy behind Bitcoin
• The unique connection between business success and personal integrity
• Moral Leadership and Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior
• How closely can managers monitor their employees’ behavior?
• Business ethics and social responsibility education: shifting the worldview
• Ethical behaviors and economic rationality: an overview
• Business ethics and social responsibilities
• Who determines whether private or personal information should be collected?
• The business ethics case of McDonald’s
• Understanding and preventing ethical failures in leadership
• Ethical Dilemmas in Conducting Business
• Moral policing: It’s more business than ideology.
• Data Security Enhancement and Business Ethics
• Perceptions of business ethics: Students vs. business people
• American business culture and ethical norms
• Does business ethics make economic sense?
• Moral Leadership and business ethics
• Business Ethics in Islam: the glaring gap in Practice

Read Also – Business Research Topics

Criminal Justice Research Topics in Ethics

We always hear how law enforcement is made to protect the commoner’s rights. Unfortunately, it is not always the case. These law enforcers sometimes end up in morally ambiguous situations. Now and then, we often hear news about how a fellow police officer exploited a commoner. So, if this topic piques your interest, this list might be helpful for you. Below are some interesting topics in criminal justice ethics.

• The Codes of ethics for criminal justice
• Integrity in the Criminal Justice System
• A detailed analysis of the ethics of criminal justice
• Model affairs and impartial statutory policies.
• Arguments for and against capital punishment
• Discussion on the ethical ramifications of the “innocent until proven guilty” principle
• Examination of the Stanford Prison Experiment’s ethical issues.
• What moral ramifications do school shooter exercises have?
• Discuss if Julian Assange’s prosecution is appropriate.
• Examining the ethical difficulties of privatized prisons
• Imprisonment of young offenders: Is it ethically right?
• Ethics in criminal justice: theory and practices
• Ethical Dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice

Read Also – 150 Advanced Law Research Paper Topics

Environmental Ethics Topics

If you are willing to compare and contrast topics for environmental ethics, you can take ideas from some of the below-given research topics. Read through the entire list, narrow down the best topics, and finally, set your tone to make your point.

• An Introduction to environmental ethics
• The bio-ethical standards of Coca-Cola
• A detailed study of the global warming ethics
• Assessing the US Government’s environmental ethics
• Should companies be held accountable for preserving the environment?
• A deeper look at the EU Administration’s environmental policy and commercial ethics
• Environmental Regulations and business ethics
• A detailed study on the primary environmental and ethical issues in business?
• Ethics of setting up residential structures in sensitive habitats.
• Animal testing in the cosmetic industry
• Recreational environmental ethics: A more detailed examination of the effects of hunting
• Ethical evaluation of initiatives to combat climate change
• Commercial whaling: an ethical analysis
• A detailed evaluation of insider trading: can we call it ethical?
• Is there a moral case for pollution trade-off programmers?
• What do people think about good versus bad ethics?
• Electric vehicles can help rescue the environment.
• Tax evasion and tax avoidance: what exactly is legally right?
• A critical evaluation of the global warming ethics
• Pollution trade-off programs: are they ethically justified?
• Ethical Analysis of climate change mitigation efforts

Read Also – List of 150 Enticing Chemistry Research Topics

Final Thoughts

From the array of ethics topics provided, choose one that captures your interest and aligns with your academic preferences. We hope this list proves insightful for your upcoming research paper. If you ever feel stuck, remember that help is available!

Consider using our paper help service if you’re searching for a topic for your research proposal, thesis , dissertation, or any other academic writing. Our skilled paper helpers can assist you in developing a unique ethics research paper topic. Should you require expert guidance, don’t hesitate to seek outstanding writing assistance at a reasonable price.

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• Open access
• Published: 07 August 2024

Ethical considerations in public engagement: developing tools for assessing the boundaries of research and involvement

• Jaime Garcia-Iglesias 1 ,
• Iona Beange 2 ,
• Donald Davidson 2 ,
• Suzanne Goopy 3 ,
• Huayi Huang 3 ,
• Fiona Murray 4 ,
• Carol Porteous 5 ,
• Elizabeth Stevenson 6 ,
• Sinead Rhodes 7 ,
• Faye Watson 8 &
• Sue Fletcher-Watson 7  

Research Involvement and Engagement volume  10 , Article number:  83 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Public engagement with research (PEwR) has become increasingly integral to research practices. This paper explores the process and outcomes of a collaborative effort to address the ethical implications of PEwR activities and develop tools to navigate them within the context of a University Medical School. The activities this paper reflects on aimed to establish boundaries between research data collection and PEwR activities, support colleagues in identifying the ethical considerations relevant to their planned activities, and build confidence and capacity among staff to conduct PEwR projects. The development process involved the creation of a taxonomy outlining key terms used in PEwR work, a self-assessment tool to evaluate the need for formal ethical review, and a code of conduct for ethical PEwR. These tools were refined through iterative discussions and feedback from stakeholders, resulting in practical guidance for researchers navigating the ethical complexities of PEwR. Additionally, reflective prompts were developed to guide researchers in planning and conducting engagement activities, addressing a crucial aspect often overlooked in formal ethical review processes. The paper reflects on the broader regulatory landscape and the limitations of existing approval and governance processes, and prompts critical reflection on the compatibility of formal approval processes with the ethos of PEwR. Overall, the paper offers insights and practical guidance for researchers and institutions grappling with ethical considerations in PEwR, contributing to the ongoing conversation surrounding responsible research practices.

Plain English summary

This paper talks about making research fairer for everyone involved. Sometimes, researchers ask members of the public for advice, guidance or insight, or for help to design or do research, this is sometimes known as ‘public engagement with research’. But figuring out how to do this in a fair and respectful way can be tricky. In this paper, we discuss how we tried to make some helpful tools. These tools help researchers decide if they need to get formal permission, known as ethical approval, for their work when they are engaging with members of the public or communities. They also give tips on how to do the work in a good and fair way. We produced three main tools. One helps people understand the important words used in this kind of work (known as a taxonomy). Another tool helps researchers decide if they need to ask for special permission (a self-assessment tool). And the last tool gives guidelines on how to do the work in a respectful way (a code of conduct). These tools are meant to help researchers do their work better and treat everyone involved fairly. The paper also talks about how more work is needed in the area, but these tools are a good start to making research fairer and more respectful for everyone.

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Introduction

In recent decades, “public involvement in research” has experienced significant development, becoming an essential element of the research landscape. In fact, it has been argued, public involvement may make research better and more relevant [ 7 , p. 1]. Patients’ roles, traditionally study participants, have transformed to become “active partners and co-designers” [ 17 , p. 1]. This evolution has led to the appearance of a multitude of definitions and terms to refer to these activities. In the UK, the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement, defines public engagement as the “many ways organisations seek to involve the public in their work” [ 9 ]. In this paper, we also refer to “public involvement,” which is defined as “research being carried out ‘with’ or ‘by’ members of the public rather than ‘to’, ‘about’ or ‘for’ them” (UK Standards for Public Involvement). Further to this, the Health Research Authority (also in the UK), defines public engagement with research as “all the ways in which the research community works together with people including patients, carers, advocates, service users and members of the community” [ 6 ]; [ 9 ]. These terms encompass a wide variety of theorizations, levels of engagement, and terminology, such as ‘patient-oriented research’, ‘participatory’ research or services or ‘patient engagement’ [ 17 , p. 2]. For this paper, we use the term ‘public engagement with research’ or PEwR in this way.

Institutions have been set up to support PEwR activities. In the UK these include the UK Standards for Public Involvement in Research (supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research), INVOLVE, and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE). Most recently, in 2023, the UK’s largest funders and healthcare bodies signed a joint statement “to improve the extent and quality of public involvement across the sector so that it is consistently excellent” [ 6 ]. In turn, this has often translated to public engagement becoming a requisite for securing research funding or institutional ethical permissions [ 3 , p. 2], as well as reporting and publishing research [ 15 ]. Despite this welcomed infrastructure to support PEwR, there remain gaps in knowledge and standards in the delivery of PEwR. One such gap concerns the extent to which PEwR should be subject to formal ethical review in the same way as data collection for research.

In 2016, the UK Health Research Authority and INVOLVE published a joint statement suggesting that “involving the public in the design and development of research does not generally raise any ethical concerns” [ 7 , p. 2]. We presume that this statement is using the phrase ‘ethical concerns’ to narrowly refer to the kinds of concerns addressed by a formal research ethics review process, such as safeguarding, withdrawal from research, etc. Footnote 1 . To such an extent, we agree that public involvement with research is not inherently ‘riskier’ than other research activities.

Furthermore, a blanket need for formal ethical review risks demoting or disempowering non-academic contributors from the roles of consultants, co-researchers, or advisors to a more passive status as participants. Attending a meeting as an expert, discussing new project ideas, setting priorities, designing studies and, or interpreting findings does not require that we sign a consent form. Indeed, to do so clearly removes the locus of power away from the person signing and into the hands of the person who wrote the consent form. This particular risk is exacerbated when institutional, formal ethical review processes operate in complex, convoluted and obscure ways that often baffle researchers let alone members of the public.

However, we also recognize that PEwR is not without potential to do harm – something which formal research ethics review aims to anticipate and minimise. For example, a public lecture or a workshop could cause distress to audience members or participants if they learn for the first time that aspects of their lifestyle or personal history put them at higher risk of dementia. When patients are invited to join advisory panels, they may feel pressure to reveal personal details about their medical history to reinforce their expertise or legitimise their presence – especially in a room where most other people have potentially intimidating professional qualifications. Some patient groups may be exploited, if research involvement roles are positioned as an opportunity, or even a duty, and not properly reimbursed. When patients are more deeply involved in research roles, such as collecting or analysing data, they might experience distress, particularly if interacting with participants triggers their own painful or emotional memories [ 14 , p. 98]. Thus, at all levels of PEwR from science communication to embedded co-production, there is a danger of harm to patients or members of the public, and a duty of care on the part of the research team and broader institution who invited them in.

These concerns are not accessory to PEwR activities but rather exist at their heart. Following a review on the impacts of public engagement, Brett et al. conclude that “developing a wide view which considers the impact of PPI [public and patient involvement] on the people involved in the process can be critical to our understanding of why some studies that involve patients and the public thrive, while others fail” [ 1 , p. 388]. Despite the importance of these considerations, there is a stark absence of consistent guidance as to whether different forms of PEwR require formal ethical review. Nor is there, to our knowledge, any sustained attempt to provide a framework for ethical conduct of PEwR in the absence of formal review (see Pandya-Wood et al. [ 11 ]; Greenhalgh et al. [ 5 ]). This is, in part, due to there being a wide heterogeneity of practices, communities, and levels of engagement [ 8 , p. 6] that resists generalizable principles or frameworks.

The lack of frameworks about whether or how PEwR requires formal ethical review can, ironically, be a key barrier to PEwR happening. In our work as members of a university ethics review committee, we have found this lack of guidance to hamper appropriate ethical PEwR in several ways. Researchers may avoid developing PEwR initiatives altogether for fear of having to spend time or resources in securing formal ethical review (especially when this process is lengthy or resource-intensive). Likewise, they may avoid PEwR for fear that its conduction would be unethical. On the other hand, others could assume that the lack of a requirement for formal ethical review means there are no ethical issues or risks involved in PEwR.

Similarly, experts in PEwR who are not experienced with formal research ethics review may face barriers as their PEwR process becomes more elaborate, in-depth, or complex. For example, although a priority-setting exercise with members of an online community of people with depression was assessed as not requiring ethics review, the funding panel requested that formal ethics review be undergone for a follow-up exercised aimed at collecting data answering one of the priority questions identified in the previous priority-setting. It is crucial that innovations in PEwR and findings from this work are shared and yet academic teams may be unable to publish their work in certain journals which require evidence of having undergone formal ethical review. Finally, ethics committees such as ours often must rely on anecdotal knowledge to make judgements about what does or does not require formal ethical review, given the absence of standardized frameworks.

About this paper

In this paper, we report and reflect on the development of specific tools and processes for assessing the ethical needs of PEwR initiatives, as members of an ethics review committee for a large University medical school. These tools aim to delineate boundaries between research data collection and PEwR activities of various kinds, provide a self-assessment framework for ethical practice in PEwR and, overall, give people greater confidence when conducting PEwR work. We describe and critically reflect on the development of the following resources:

a taxonomy to define key terms relating to PEwR with associated resource recommendations.

a self-assessment tool to support people understanding where their planned activities fall in relation to research or PEwR.

a code of conduct for ethical conduct of PEwR (appended to the self-assessment tool).

We will, first, describe our work as part of an institutional ethics committee, the identification of a need for specific guidance, and our key assumptions; we will then describe the process of developing these tools and processes; provide an overview of the tools themselves; and reflect on early feedback received and future work needed.

Developing specific tools for PEWR in ethics

Identifying needs, goals and outputs.

The Edinburgh Medical School Research Ethics Committee (EMREC) provides ethical opinions to members of staff and postgraduate researchers within the University of Edinburgh Medical School in relation to planned research to be conducted on humans i.e. their data, or tissues. These research activities come from a wide range of disciplines, including public health, epidemiology, social science or psychology. EMREC does not review research that involves recruitment of NHS patients, use of NHS data, or other health service resources: such projects are evaluated by an NHS research ethics committee. EMREC is led by two co-directors and formed of over 38 members, which include experienced academics and academic-clinicians from a variety of disciplines. There are also 2–4 lay members who are not researchers.

EMREC receives regular enquiries about whether a specific piece of PEwR work (such as holding a workshop with people living with endometriosis to identify research priorities or interviewing HIV activists about their work during COVID-19) requires formal ethics review. In addition, often teams contact EMREC following completion of a PEwR activity that they want to publish because the journal in which they wish to publish has requested evidence of the work having undergone formal ethics approval. These enquiries are happening in the context of an institutional investment in staffing, leading to a significant degree of distributed expertise across the Medical School about diverse forms of PEwR.

Responding to this, in the summer of 2022, a Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement working group was formed by EMREC with the aim of developing new tools and processes to navigate the ethical implications of PEWR within the University of Edinburgh Medical School. The group’s original understandings were that:

PEwR is both important and skilled work that presents a unique set of ethical implications,

PEwR is a fragmented landscape where many people have relevant but different expertise and where a wide range of terminology is in use, and.

there is no existing widely-agreed framework for ethical PEwR.

This working group was designed to be temporary, lasting approximately six months. It was composed of eleven members with different degrees of seniority and disciplinary backgrounds - both members of EMREC and those from other parts of the Medical School, and other parts of the University of Edinburgh. Among these, there were both academics and PEwR experts in professional services (i.e. primarily non-academic) roles. The working group met four times (August, September and November 2022; and January 2023).

The group identified three key goals and, in relation to these, key outputs needed. The goals were: (1) help establish boundaries between research data collection (requiring an ethical opinion from EMREC) and PEwR activities of various kinds (requiring ethical reflection/practice but not a formal EMREC ethical opinion), (2) support colleagues to identify where their planned activities fell in the research-PEwR continuum and consequently the relevant ethical framework, and (3) identify ways of building confidence and capacity among staff to conduct PEwR projects. In relation to these goals, the working group initially agreed on producing the following key outputs:

A taxonomy outlining and defining key terms used in the PEwR work, with examples. While not universal or definitive, the taxonomy should help colleagues identify and label their activities and help determine the ethical considerations that would apply to conduct the work with integrity. It would also facilitate conversations between staff with varying levels and types of experience, and ensure that decisions around ethical conduct would be based on more than choice of terminology.

A self-assessment tool to provide a more systematic way to evaluate whether a given academic activity, involving a non-academic partner (organisation or individual) requires formal evaluation by a research ethics committee.

A list of resources collected both from within and beyond our institution that are relevant to the issue of ethics and PEwR and can serve as ‘further reading’ and training.

While we aimed to develop this work with a view to it being useful within the remit of the University of Edinburgh Medical School, we also understood that there was significant potential for these outputs to be of interest and relevance more widely. In this way, we aimed to position them as a pragmatic addition to existing guidance and resources, such as the NIHR Reflective Questions [ 2 ].

Our process

Across the first three meetings, the group worked together on the simultaneous development of the three outputs (taxonomy, self-assessment tool, and resources). The initial taxonomy was informed by the guidance produced by the Public Involvement Resource Hub at Imperial College London [ 10 ]. The taxonomy was developed as a table that included key terms (such as ‘public engagement’, ‘co-production’, or ‘market research’), with their definitions, examples, and synonyms. From early on, it was decided that different key terms would not be defined by the methods used, as there could be significant overlap among these – e.g. something called a focus group might be a part of a consultation, market research or research data collection.

A draft table (with just six categories) was presented in the first meeting and group members were asked to work on the table between meetings, including providing additional examples, amending language, or any other suggestions. This was done on a shared document using ‘comments’ so that contradictory views could be identified and agreements reached. The table was also shared with colleagues from outside the University of Edinburgh Medical School to capture the range of terminologies used across disciplines, recognising the interdisciplinary nature of much research.

Through this process, additional key terms were identified, such as “science communication” and “action research,” definitions were developed more fully, and synonyms were sometimes contextualized (by indicating, for example, shades of difference or usages specific to an area). Upon further work, three additional sections were added to the taxonomy tool: first, an introduction was developed that explained what terminology our specific institution used and noted that the boundaries between different terms were often “fuzzy and flexible.” In addition, the group agreed that it would be useful to provide a narrative example of how different forms of public engagement with research might co-exist and flow from one to another. To this end, a fictional example was developed where a team of clinical researchers interested in diabetes are described engaging in scoping work, research, co-production, science communication and action research at different times of their research programme. Finally, a section was also added that prompted researchers to reflect on the processes of negotiating how partners can be described in research (for example, whether to use terms such as ‘patient’ or ‘lay member’).

For the self-assessment tool, a first iteration was a table with two columns (one for research or work requiring formal ethical review and one for PEwR or work not requiring formal ethical review). The aim was for group members to fill the table with examples of activities that would fall under each category, with a view to identifying generalizable characteristics. However, this task proved complicated given the wide diversity of possible activities, multitude of contexts, and sheer number of exceptions. To address this, group members were asked to complete a case-based exercise. They were presented with the following situation: “I tell you I’m planning a focus group with some autistic folk” and asked how they would determine whether the activity would be a form of data collection for a research project (requiring formal ethical review) or another form of PEwR. Group members were asked, with a view to developing the self-assessment tool, to identify which questions they would ask to assess the activity. The replies of working group members were synthesized by one of the authors (SFW) and presented at the following meeting.

Through discussion as a group, we determined that the questions identified as useful in identifying if an activity required formal ethical review fell, roughly, under four main areas. Under each area, some indicators of activities were provided which were “less likely to need ethics review” and some “more likely to need ethics review”. The four umbrella questions were:

What is the purpose and the planned outcome of the activity? (see Table  1 for an excerpt of the initial draft answer to this question)

What is the status of the people involved in the activity? (indicators of less likely to need ethics review were “participants will be equal partners with academic team” or “participants will be advisors” and indicators more likely to require ethics approval were “participants will undertake tasks determined by academics” or “participants will contribute data or sign consent forms”).

What kind of information is being collected? (indicators of less likely to need ethics review were “asking about expert opinion on a topic” or “sessions will be minuted and notes taken” and indicators more likely to require ethics approval were “sessions will be recorded and transcribed” or “asking about participants’ personal experiences”).

What are the risks inherent in this activity? (indicators of less likely to need ethics review were “participants will be involved in decision-making” or “participants will be credited for their role in a manner of their choosing” and indicators more likely to require ethics approval were “participants’ involvement will and must be anonymized fully” or “participants have a choice between following protocol or withdrawing from the study”).

Upon further work, the group decided to modify this initial iteration in several ways leading to the final version. First, a brief introduction explaining the purpose of the tool was written. This included information about the aims of the tool, and a very brief overview of the process of formal research ethics review. It also emphasised the importance of discussion of the tool within the team, with PEwR experts and sometimes with EMREC members, depending on how clear-cut the outcome was. Second, we included brief information about what are ‘research’ and ‘public engagement with research’ with a view to supporting people who may not be familiar with how these concepts are used by ethics review committees (for example, lay co-applicants or co-researchers). Third, we included key guidance about how to use the tool, including ‘next steps’ if the activity was determined to be research or engagement. Importantly, this emphasised that none of the questions posed and indicators given were definitive of something needing or not needing formal research ethics review, but instead they should be used collectively to signpost a team towards, or away from, formal review.

Finally, while the four umbrella questions remained the same as in the previous iteration, the indicators under each were further refined. In discussing the previous version, the group agreed that, while some indicators could relate to an activity falling into either category (research or engagement) depending on other factors, there were others that were much more likely to fall under one category than the other. In other words, while no single indicator was deterministic of needing or not needing formal review, some indicators were more influential than others on the final self-assessment outcome. Thus, we divided the indicators associated with each umbrella question into two sub-groups. The more influential indicators were labelled as either “probably doesn’t need ethical review” or “almost certainly needs ethical review”. Less influential indicators were labelled as either “less likely to need ethical review” or “more likely to need ethical review.” This is shown in Table  2 .

This new format retains the awareness of the sometimes-blurry lines between research and PEwR for many activities, but also seeks to provide stronger direction through indicative activities that are more clear-cut, with a particular view to supporting early-career researchers and people new to ethics reviews and/or engagement processes.

A key concern of the group was what would happen next if a planned activity, using the self-assessment tool, was deemed as PEwR. The formal review process for research would not be available for a planned activity identified as PEwR i.e. completing a series of documents and a number of protocols to deal with issues such as data protection, safeguarding, etc. This would leave a vacuum in terms of guidance for ethical conduction of PEwR. The group was concerned that some people using the self-assessment tool might arrive at the conclusion that their planned activity was entirely without ethical risks, given that it was not required to undergo formal review. Others might be conscious of the risks but feel adrift as to how to proceed. This was a particular concern with early-career researchers and indeed established academics turning to PEwR for the first time: we wanted to facilitate their involvement with PEwR but we were also aware that many may lack experience and resources. To address this, the group decided to develop an additional output comprising a series of reflective prompts to guide researchers in planning and conducting engagement activities.

The prompts were organized under four headings. First, “Data Minimisation and Security” included information about required compliance with data protection legislation, suggestions about collecting and processing information, and ideas around ensuring confidentiality. Second, “Safeguarding Collaborators and Emotional Labour” prompted researchers to think about the risk of partners becoming distressed and suggested what things should be planned for in this regard. Third, “Professional Conduct and Intellectual Property” included advice on how to clearly manage partners’ expectations around their contributions, impact, and intellectual property. Finally, fourth, under “Power Imbalances”, the guidance discusses how researchers may work to address the inherent imbalances that exist in relationships with partners. It prompts the researcher to think about choice of location, information sharing, and authorship among others. While the Edinburgh Medical School Research Ethics Committee remains available for consultation on all these matters, as well as dedicated and professional PEwR staff, the group developed these guidelines with a view both to emphasizing the fact that an activity not requiring formal ethical review did not mean that the activity was absent of risk or did not require careful ethical planning; and to support those who may be unfamiliar with how to develop engagement activities. It was decided that this guideline should follow the self-assessment tool for clarity.

Finally, in the process of developing these outputs (the planned taxonomy and assessment tool, and the additional reflective prompts appended to the assessment tool), the group collected a large number of resources, including academic papers (e.g. Staniszewska et al. [ 16 ]; Schroeder et al. [ 13 ]; Redman et al. [ 12 ]; Fletcher-Watson et al. [ 4 ]), guidance produced by other institutions, and key online sites with information about national frameworks or policy. Among these, key resources were selected and appended to the taxonomy document. The final version of these documents can be found as appendices (Supplementary Material  1 : Assessment tool and reflective prompts; Supplementary Material  2 : Taxonomy and resources).

Further considerations and early results

The guidance and tools presented here are designed to clarify a boundary between research and engagement that is poorly defined and could cause harm if not well understood. In sharing them, we aim to facilitate researchers’ engagement with PEwR by providing familiarity with the terminology and approaches, examples, and suggesting key considerations. Most importantly, they support researchers to determine whether their planned activity should undergo a formal ethical review process or not – and if not, guides them towards ethical conduct in the absence of formal review. Reflecting on the process much of what we have explained essentially reflects a distinction between PEwR and research data collection that can be encapsulated within the idea of ‘locus of control’: namely that during PEwR the locus of control, as far as possible, sits with the engaged communities or members.

It should be noted, however, that researchers and these guidance and tools exist within a larger landscape, with added regulatory processes. Thus, researchers may need (regardless of whether their planned activity is research or engagement) to navigate additional compliance such as data protection or information security protocols and / or to consider reputational risk associated with certain topics. We are aware that the overlap of complex and sometimes obscure regulatory demands complicates the task of conducting both research and PEwR, as it requires researchers to juggle multiple procedures, documents, and approvals. This publication does not resolve all the questions that exist, but it does attempt to take a bold step towards confronting grey areas and providing systematic processes to navigate them.

The outputs described above were made available on the University of Edinburgh Medical School Research Ethics Committee intranet site under the heading “Public Engagement with Research.” While we do not collect statistics on the number of times the resources have been used, the committee has received positive feedback from people who have engaged with the documents. For example, one researcher commented that, in the process of developing an engagement activity, they had been “grappling with precisely these questions (of whether this qualifies as research, and whether it requires ethical review)” and that the documents were “quite timely and helpful. It allows me to think about these considerations in a systematic manner and it’s handy for me to send on to others as a framework for discussion should we have differing opinions.” It was this mention to the possibility of these documents being used as a framework for discussion that prompted us to write this paper as a way of sharing them beyond the University of Edinburgh College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine (where they are already used for training early-career researchers and in the MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement). While we think they can be useful, we also encourage potential users to adapt them to their specific contexts, with different institutions potentially establishing differing procedures or requirements. To that end, we have shared in this paper the process of writing these documents so that other people and teams may also think through them productively and creatively.

Final reflections

In developing these documents, we sought to answer a need among members of our immediate community, seeking to better assess whether an activity required formal ethical review and wanting guidance to ethically conduct PEwR work. However, we also came to realize the limitations of existing approval and governance processes. In our case, a key reason why these documents were developed is because existing formal ethical review processes would not be adequate to capture the particularities and complexities of PEwR in our large, diverse Medical School.

Looking back at the tools we developed and the feedback received, we are also satisfied with the pragmatic approach we took. There is a vast amount of resources and literature available about how to conduct PEwR, as well as a multitude of accounts and reflections both of an anecdotal and epistemological nature. Building on this conceptual work and associated principles, we sought to develop pragmatic, clear, applicable tools, without overwhelming users with a multitude of available resources and complex theory. This is, we feel, particularly applicable to contexts like ours: a large, very diverse medical school which encompasses biomedical to social science disciplines where researchers and funders have vastly differing expectations and knowledge of PEwR.

This process also led us to reflect on the practical functions of formal ethical review. Formal ethics approval provides applicants with structured resources to think and plan about their work, feedback and guidance about their plans, and—most commonly—a code and letter than can be used to easily report to journals that your research has met a specific ethical threshold. With these documents we have sought to provide some similar, pragmatic guidance to support and empower people, through a self-assessment process. This begs the question, what, if any, formal approval processes should be developed for PEwR? Are such formal processes in any way adequate to the ethos of PEwR? Would formal independent review necessarily conflict with the values of PEwR, namely the empowerment of community members as decision-makers and experts? Thus, these documents and this paper contribute to an ongoing conversation as PEwR continues to develop in frequency and sophistication in health and social care research.

Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

The difference between research and public engagement is a complex one. Formal ethics approval, which is often seen as a regulatory or compliance mechanism, may not always be a good marker of this boundary, as it may ignore complex issues such as the distribution of power, the ethos of the activities, or their aims. Furthermore, different institutions use different criteria to determine what activities require ethics approval or are considered research. In this paper we reflect on the process of developing tools which we intended as pragmatic interventions that would support researchers, especially those without previous experience of PEwR to label their planned activities and understand their implications. Thus, we employ—even if not at all times comfortably—the framework that equates research with activities requiring ethics approval and PEwR with activities not requiring ethics approval.

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Acknowledgements

For the purposes of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.

This research was supported, in part, by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/X003604/1].

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JGI: conceptualisation and writing (original draft); IB, DJD, SG, HH, FM, CP, ES, SR, FW: conceptualisation, writing (editing and reviewing); SFW: conceptualisation and writing (original draft).

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Garcia-Iglesias, J., Beange, I., Davidson, D. et al. Ethical considerations in public engagement: developing tools for assessing the boundaries of research and involvement. Res Involv Engagem 10 , 83 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-024-00617-8

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-024-00617-8

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• August 8, 2024 August 8, 2024

Edited by David Edmonds, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre, this collection of lively and accessible essays covers topics such as healthcare, employment, autonomous weapons, online advertising and much more.

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Edmonds, D. (Ed.), 2024, ‘AI Morality’, (Oxford University Press)

Published: 08 August 2024 | ISBN: 9780198876434 | Oxford University Press

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