What is the importance of ethical principles in protecting study participants?
Research ethics are moral principles that guide researchers to conduct and report research without deception or intention to harm the participants of the study or members of the society as a whole, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Practising ethical guidelines while conducting and reporting research is essential to establish the validity of your research.
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You must follow ethical guidelines issued by regulatory committees in order to ensure the safety of the participants of a study, the public at large, and that of the researcher himself/herself. Following ethical guidelines will ensure that your research is authentic and error-free, and will allow you to gain credibility and support from the public. You must adhere to ethical guidelines also while presenting your findings in your manuscript. This will ensure that your article is plagiarism-free and also no unverified data reaches the readers of your article. Apart from that, research ethics fill in a sense of responsibility among researchers and make it easy to fix responsibility in case of misconduct. Writers: Haley M. Holland, protocol analyst, Human Research Protection Program, [email protected]; Jennifer S. Linvill, Ph.D., IRB administrator, Human Research Protection Program, [email protected] There are a number of ethical principles that should be taken into account when performing undergraduate and master's level dissertation research. At the core, these ethical principles stress the need to (a) do good (known as beneficence) and (b) do no harm (known as non-malfeasance). In practice, these ethical principles mean that as a researcher, you need to: (a) obtain informed consent from potential research participants; (b) minimise the risk of harm to participants; (c) protect their anonymity and confidentiality; (d) avoid using deceptive practices; and (e) give participants the right to withdraw from your research. This article discusses these five ethical principles and their practical implications when carrying out dissertation research. When you look at these five basic ethical principles, it may appear obvious that your dissertation should include these. However, there are many instances where it is not possible or desirable to obtain informed consent from research participants. Similarly, there may be instances where you seek permission from participants not to protect their anonymity. More often than not, such choices should reflect the research strategy that you adopt to guide your dissertation. Broadly speaking, your dissertation research should not only aim to do good (i.e., beneficence), but also avoid doing any harm (i.e., non-malfeasance). Whilst ethical requirements in research can vary across countries, these are the basic principles of research ethics. This is important not only for ethical reasons, but also practical ones, since a failure to meet such basic principles may lead to your research being (a) criticised, potentially leading to a lower mark, and/or (b) rejected by your supervisor or Ethics Committee, costing you valuable time. In the sections that follow, we discuss the five of the main practical ethical principles that stem from these basic principles. Each of these basic principles of research ethics is discussed in turn: PRINCIPLE ONE |