documenting research sources in your research paper is ethical because

Renew Materials
Pay a Library Fee
Solutions Hub
DMU Homepage
Course Reserves
Collections A-Z
How to Find Materials
Board Review Study Materials
Bones and Anatomical Models
Student Checkout Policy
Pay A Library Fee
Recommend A Resource
Apply for a Student Job
Research Appointment
Paper Writing and Citation Help
Information Literacy Program
Checkout Policy
Library Liaisons
Faculty Services Guide
Textbook Adoption Form
Request an Instruction Session
Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
Search Library FAQs
Library Guides (LibGuides)
DMU Historical Archives
Public Access & Scanning
Citation Tools
Coming Soon! Institutional Repository
Library Consult Reference Service
About the Library
Library Mission & Vision
Library Hours
Library Location
Library Staff
Circulation Policies
Donation Guidelines
Ask Us for Help
Help Finding Resources
Access to Resources On & Off Campus
Library Tutorials
Public Access Computer/Visitor Guide

Ethical Documentation - Academic Integrity in Research & Writing: Why is Proper Documentation So Important?

What is Peer Review?
Internet Resources & Wikipedia
Google & GoogleScholar
What is a Citation?
What is Plagiarism?
How To Cite Your Work
Organize Your Research: Citation Management Software
Copyright & Intellectual Property
Getting Help

Why is Proper Documentation so Important?

Locating scholarly resources and then citing these references accurately should be the foundation of your own academic and professional writing.

Why is this an ethical issue? Correct documentation

Provides attribution or credit to the original author or creator.
Allows someone to find the documents you cited on their own.
Enables the reader to follow the continuum of research. What important contributions were made before your work and where does your body of research contribute to or add to current knowledge?
Enables others to verify the accuracy and completeness of your work. A thorough reference list demonstrates that you are knowledgeable about your field of inquiry.
Communicates transparency, trust, and integrity and helps you to avoid plagiarism.

DMU Library. (2021). Why cite? [Infographic].

Incorrect Documentation

Ethical research and writing means giving proper attribution and credit to the work of others. In the academic community the ideas, words, and formal or informal publications of others is considered intellectual property. Failing to provide the correct citation may not always be plagiarism. However, if another scholar cannot easily find the research you claim to have consulted, one may reasonably conclude that you either “raided” the reference list of someone else, or that you made up the reference(s) on your own. In either case, you did not actually do the work of reading and analyzing the source material yourself. Citing sources without reading them is considered fraudulent because you are lying about the work you have done. Finally, you should not simply trust the conclusions of others. Always track down and read the original research yourself to make sure that the data is accurate.

Finally, sometimes the expression of someone’s creative work is copyrighted. You may see official copyright or creative commons licensing information on a website or publication indicating that the work is protected. Regardless of whether or not you see an official notice, you should always consider any written, visual, multimedia, or auditory work as protected under copyright law whether or not you see an official trademark or warning.

<< Previous: Google & GoogleScholar
Next: What is a Citation? >>
Last Updated: Jul 11, 2024 9:28 AM
URL: https://lib.dmu.edu/su/ethicaldoc

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

Knowledge Base

Methodology

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

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.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

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	Your participants are free to opt in or out of the study at any point in time.
Informed consent	Participants know the purpose, benefits, risks, and funding behind the study before they agree or decline to join.
Anonymity	You don’t know the identities of the participants. Personally identifiable data is not collected.
Confidentiality	You know who the participants are but you keep that information hidden from everyone else. You anonymize personally identifiable data so that it can’t be linked to other data by anyone else.
Potential for harm	Physical, social, psychological and all other types of harm are kept to an absolute minimum.
Results communication	You ensure your work is free of or research misconduct, and you accurately represent your results.

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.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

Academic style
Vague sentences
Style consistency

See an example

documenting research sources in your research paper is ethical because

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.

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 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.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Bhandari, P. (2024, May 09). Ethical Considerations in Research | Types & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved August 28, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/research-ethics/

Is this article helpful?

Pritha Bhandari

Other students also liked, data collection | definition, methods & examples, what is self-plagiarism | definition & how to avoid it, how to avoid plagiarism | tips on citing sources, what is your plagiarism score.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Research Writing in Academic Disciplines

17 Ethics and Documenting Sources

By michael beilfuss, general principles.

In day-to-day life, most people have a sort of sliding scale on what constitutes ethical behavior. For example, you might tell your best friend their new haircut looks attractive when in fact you believe that it does not. This lie, though minor, preserves your friend’s feelings and does no apparent harm to them or anyone else. Some might consider the context before determining how to act. For example, you might not tell a stranger that they were trailing toilet paper, but you would tell a friend. With a stranger, your calculations may include how the stranger might respond to the interruption, and both of you may feel some embarrassment in the exchange. Such calculations may make it easier for you to look away and let someone else deal with it, but with a friend, you would be willing to risk some short-term awkwardness to do the right thing.

In a far more serious situation, a person might not risk their lives to help a stranger, but they might risk their lives to help a close friend or relative. For example, if you witness a stranger attacking someone you do not know on a crowded street, you may be afraid to interfere because you could be injured in the event. Instead, you might stay back and call the police. But if a close friend or a relative was in the same danger, you may be more likely to put yourself in harm’s way to protect your friend. In this case, your commitment to loyalty might outweigh your sense of self-preservation. In the former case, if you valued physical courage above all else, you might be willing to step into a fight to protect a victim. In either case, weighing the costs and having a strong value system would help you feel like you did the right thing—especially upon reflection after the event.

Ethical behavior, including ethical technical communication, involves not just telling the truth and providing accurate information, but telling the truth and providing information so that a reasonable audience is made aware of the behavior. It also means that you act to prevent actual harm with set criteria for what kinds and degrees of harm are more serious than others.

For example, saving someone’s life should always outweigh the prospect of financial damage to your company. Human values, and human life, are far more important than monetary values and financial gain. As a guideline, ask yourself what would happen if your action (or non-action) became entirely public and started trending on social media, got its own hashtag, and became a meme picked up by the national media. If you would go to prison, lose your friends, lose your job, or even just feel embarrassed, the action is probably unethical. If your actions cannot stand up to that scrutiny, you might reconsider them. Having a strong ethical foundation always helps.

However, nothing is ever easy when it comes to ethical dilemmas. Sometimes the right thing to do is the unpopular thing to do. Just because some action enjoys the adulation of the masses does not necessarily mean it is appropriate. As such, it is important to give some serious thought to your own value system and how it may fit into the value systems of the exemplars you admire and respect. That way, you will be better prepared to do the right thing when you are confronted with a moral dilemma. Internalizing your principles in such a manner will certainly make you a more ethical writer.

Presentation of Information

How a writer presents information in a document can affect a reader’s understanding of the relative weight or seriousness of that information. For example, hiding some crucial bit of information in the middle of a long paragraph deep in a long document seriously de-emphasizes the information. On the other hand, putting a minor point in a prominent spot (say the first item in a bulleted list in a report’s executive summary) might be a manipulative strategy to emphasize information that is not terribly important. Both of these examples could be considered unethical, as the display of information is crucial to how readers encounter and interpret it.

A classic example of unethical technical writing is the memo report NASA engineers wrote about the problem with O-ring seals on the space shuttle Challenger. The unethical feature was that the crucial information about the O-rings was buried in a middle paragraph, while information approving the launch was in prominent beginning and ending spots. Presumably, the engineers were trying to present a full report, including safe components in the Challenger, but the memo’s audience—non-technical managers—mistakenly believed the O-ring problem to be inconsequential, even if it happened. The position of information in this document did not help them understand that the problem could be fatal.

Ethical writing, then, involves being ethical, of course, but also presenting information so that your target audience will understand the relative importance of information and understand whether some technical fact is a good thing or a bad thing.

Ethical Issues in Technical Communication

There are a few issues that may come up when researching a topic for the business or technical world that a writer must consider. Let us look at a few.

Research that Does Not Support the Project Idea

In a technical report that contains research, a writer might discover conflicting data that does not support the project’s goal. For example, your small company continues to have problems with employee morale. Research shows bringing in an outside expert, someone who is unfamiliar with the company and the stakeholders, has the potential to impact the greatest change. You discover, however, that to bring in such an expert is cost prohibitive. You struggle with whether to leave this information out of your report—thereby encouraging your employer to pursue an action that is not the most productive. In this situation, what would you do and why?

Suppressing Relevant Information

Imagine you are researching a report for a parents’ group that wants to change the policy in the local school district, which requires all students to be vaccinated. You collect a handful of sources that support the group’s goal, but then you discover convincing medical evidence that indicates vaccines do more good than potential harm in society. Since you are employed by this parents’ group, should you leave out the medical evidence, or do you have a responsibility to include all research—even some that might sabotage the group’s goal? Is it your responsibility to tell the truth (and potentially save children’s lives) or to cherry pick information that supports the parent group’s initial intentions?

Limited Source Information in Research

Thorough research requires a writer to integrate information from a variety of reliable sources. These sources should demonstrate that the writer has examined the topic from as many angles as possible. This includes gathering scholarly and professional research from a variety of databases or journals rather than favoring one resource. Using a variety of sources helps the writer avoid potential bias that can occur from relying on only a few experts. If you were writing a report on the real estate market in Stillwater, Oklahoma, you would not collect data from only one broker’s office. While this office might have access to broader data on the real estate market, as a writer you run the risk of looking biased if you only choose materials from this one source. Collecting information from multiple brokers would demonstrate thorough and unbiased research.

Presenting Visual Information Ethically

Visuals can be useful for communicating data and information efficiently for a reader. They provide data in a concentrated form, often illustrating key facts, statistics, or information from the text of the report. When writers present information visually, however, they have to be careful not to misrepresent or misreport the complete picture.

The graphic below shows two perspectives of information in a pie chart. The data in each is identical, but the pie chart on the left presents information in a misleading way (see Figure 17.1). What do you notice, however, about how that information is conveyed to the reader?

Imagine that these pie charts represented donations received by four candidates for city council. The candidate represented by the green slice labeled “Item C” might think that she had received more donations than the candidate represented in the blue, “Item A” slice. In fact, if we look at the same data in a differently oriented chart, we can see that Item C represents less than half of the donations than those for Item A. Thus, a simple change in perspective can change the impact of an image.

Similarly, take a look at the bar graphs in Figure 17.2 below. What do you notice about their presentation?

If the bar graph above were to stand for sales figures for a company, the representation on the left would look like good news: dramatically increased sales over a five-year period. However, a closer look at the numbers shows that the graph displays only a narrow range of numbers in a limited perspective (9100 to 9800). The bar graph on the right, on the other hand, exhibits the complete picture by presenting numbers from zero to 1200 on the vertical axis, and we see that the sales figures have in fact been relatively stable for the past five years.

Presenting data in graphical form can be especially challenging. Keep in mind the importance of providing appropriate context and perspective as you prepare your graphics. You need to be extra vigilant to avoid misleading your readers with graphics. Graphics will usually be the first thing a reader notices about your document; if a reader finds your images misleading, your entire document may be called into question.

Additional Concerns

You might notice that most of these ethics violations could happen accidentally. Directly lying is unlikely to be accidental, but even in that case, the writer could rationalize and/or persuade themselves that the lie achieved some “greater good” and was therefore necessary. This is a slippery slope.

An even more common ethics violation results from the person who designs the information mistakenly believing that they are presenting evidence objectively—without recognizing their own bias in how they presented that information.

Most ethics violations in technical writing are (probably) unintentional, but they are still ethics violations. That means a technical writer must consciously identify their biases and check to see if a bias has influenced any presentation: whether in charts and graphs, or in discussions of the evidence, or in source use (or, of course, in putting the crucial O-ring information where the launch decision makers would realize it was important).

For example, scholarly research is intended to find evidence that the new researcher’s ideas are valid (and important) or evidence that those ideas are partial, trivial, or simply wrong. In practice, though, most folks are primarily looking for support: “Hey, I have this great new idea that will solve world hunger, cure cancer, and make mascara really waterproof. Now I just need some evidence to prove I am right!” This demonstrates one version of confirmation bias, where people tend to favor evidence that supports their preconceived notions and reject evidence that challenges their ideas or beliefs.

On the other hand, if you can easily find 94 high-quality sources that confirm you are correct, you might want to consider whether your idea is worth developing. Often in technical writing, the underlying principle is already well-documented (maybe even common knowledge for your audience) and the point should be to use that underlying principle to propose a specific application.

Using a large section of your report to prove an already established principle implies that you are saying something new about the principle—which is not true. Authors of technical documents typically do not have the time or space to belabor well-known points or common-sense data because readers do not need to read page upon page of something they already know or something that can be proven in a sentence or two. When you use concepts, ideas, or findings that have been established by others, you only need to briefly summarize your source and provide accurate references. Then you can apply the information from your source(s) to your specific task or proposal.

Ethics and Documenting Sources

The most immediate concern regarding ethics in your technical writing course is documenting your sources. Whatever content you borrow must be clearly documented both in the body of your text and in a Works Cited or References page (the different terms reflect different documentation systems, and not just random preference) at the end.

Including an item only in the source list at the end suggests you have used the source in the report, but if you have not cited this source in the text as well, you could be seen as misleading the reader. Either you are saying it is a source when in fact you did not really use anything from it, or you have simply failed to clarify in the text what are your ideas and what comes from other sources.

Documenting source use in such a way as to either mislead your reader about the source or make identifying the source difficult is also unethical—that would include using just a URL or even an article title without identifying the journal in which it appears (in the Works Cited/References; you would not likely identify the journal name in the report’s body). It would also be unscrupulous to falsify the nature of the source, such as omitting the number of pages in the Works Cited entry to make a brief note seem like a full article.

Dishonest source use includes suppressing information about how you have used a source like not making it clear that graphical information in your report was already a graph in your source, as opposed to a visualization you created based on information within the source.

With the ease of acquiring graphics on the internet, it has become ever more tempting to simply copy and paste images from a search engine. Without providing accurate citation information, the practice of cutting and pasting images is nothing less than plagiarism (or theft); it is unethical and may be illegal if it violates copyright law. Furthermore, it is downright lazy. Develop good habits now and maintain them through practice. Properly cite your images by providing credit to the original creator of the image with full citations. You cannot just slap a URL under a picture, but rather you need to give full credit with an appropriate citation. Any assignment turned in that uses material from an outside source, including graphics and images, needs to include in-text citations as well as a list of references.

What about Open-Source Images?

If you need to use graphics from the internet, a good option is to look for graphics that are open source. Open source refers to material that is freely available for anyone to use. Creative Commons is an organization that has developed guidelines to allow people to “share their knowledge and creativity.” They provide “free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to make a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use” creative work (“ What we Do ”). There are a number of options that a creator has in regard to how they want to set up permissions, but the idea is that these works are free for anyone to use; they are open source.

Graphics created by the federal government, say from the National Park Service or the FDA or the EPA, are not under copyright and therefore can be used without having to go through the sometimes-onerous process of securing permissions. This is particularly helpful for written materials that will be professionally published.

Likewise, you can customize a Google image search so that only images that are open source will come up. If you click on the “Tools” button, you have the option of filtering results by how they are licensed. See Figure 17.3.

Regardless of the copyright, you should always keep track of where you found the graphics, and for assignments for your class, you need to record the source so you can cite it. If you use images (or anything at all) in an assignment that you did not create, you need to indicate as much. Just because a picture or data visualization is open source does not mean that you can pass it off as your own work. And if you don’t cite it, plagiarism is exactly what you are doing—whether or not that was your intention.

Many problems in documenting sources occur because the writer is missing the point of source use. Remember, you must clearly distinguish between your ideas and borrowed material, and you must use borrowed material primarily as evidence for your own directly stated ideas.

Intellectual Property

Patents and trademarks are company names (Walmart), logos (the Target bullseye), processes or slogans (McDonalds “I’m lovin’ it”) that belong to a person or company. None of these things can be used without proper recognition of or approval from the appropriate company or individual involved. A company uses a ™ to show something is trademarked or an ® for something registered with the U.S Patent and Trademark Office. An example would be Nike and their famous swoosh symbol.

This law extends beyond the major companies. Any written document in your own company is copyrighted by law once produced. That means if you are borrowing a good idea from a friend at another company, you must cite them as a source. Also, although not required by law, it is a good idea to cite sources from inside your own company as well. You would not want someone else taking credit for your ideas. Why should you treat others any differently?

The legal consequences are most notable when one considers writing in the professional world. While plagiarizing in the classroom may give you a failing grade, plagiarizing in the workplace can get you fired and could result in a costly lawsuit or possibly even jail time. It is not only ethical to follow these rules, it is an enforced law. Make sure you properly document all sources so as not to mislead a reader.

Copyright law includes items whose distribution is protected by law (books, movies, or software). The copyright symbol is shown with a ©. Copyright is different from plagiarism in that it is a legal issue. Only the copyright holder, the person/organization who owns the protected item, can copy it. Spend a few minutes checking out The United States Patent and Trademark Office for clarification on trademarks, patents, and copyright.

When determining if a copyright law has been violated, the court makes certain considerations:

The character, purpose of use, and amount of information being used. Was it a phrase, sentence, chapter, or an entire piece of work? Was the information simply copied and pasted as a whole or changed? Was it taken from something published or unpublished? What was it used for?
If the person using another’s material did so to profit from it. Only the copyright holders should profit from material they own. For example, a faculty member cannot use their personal DVD for a movie screening on campus and charge students to attend the viewing.
If using someone else’s property affected the market for the copyrighted work. For example, if you take an item that would cost money to buy and copy it for other people, you are affecting the market for that product since the people you give it to will now not have to purchase it themselves. Therefore, the original owner of the material is denied a profit due to your actions.

When dealing with copyright questions, consider the following tips:

First, find out if the item can be used. Sometimes, the copyright holder allows it if credit is given.
Second, do not use large amounts of another person’s information.
Third, if possible, ask permission to use another person’s work.
Finally, and most importantly, cite sources accurately so as to give credit to another person’s ideas if you are able to use them.

Ethics, Plagiarism, and Reliable Sources

Unlike personal or academic writing, technical and professional writing can be used to evaluate your job performance and can have implications that a writer may or may not have considered. Whether you are writing for colleagues within your workplace or outside vendors or customers, you will want to build a solid, well-earned, favorable reputation for yourself with your writing. Your goal is to maintain and enhance your credibility, and that of your organization, at all times.

Credibility can be established through many means: using appropriate professional language, citing highly respected sources, providing reliable evidence, and using sound logic. Make sure as you start your research that you always question the credibility of the information you find. You should ask yourself the following questions:

Are the sources popular or scholarly?
Are they peer reviewed by experts in the field?
Can the information be verified by other sources?
Are the methods and arguments based on solid reasoning and sound evidence?
Is the author identifiable, and do they have appropriate credentials?

Be cautious about using sources that are not reviewed by peers or an editor, or in which the information cannot be verified or seems misleading, biased, or even false. Be a wise information consumer in your own reading and research in order to build your reputation as an honest, ethical writer.

Quoting the work of others in your writing is fine—provided that you credit the source fully enough that your readers can find it on their own. If you fail to take careful notes, or the words/ideas are present in your writing without accurate attribution, it can have a negative impact on you and your organization. When you find an element you would like to incorporate in your document, the same moment as you copy and paste or make a note of it in your research file, note the source in a complete enough form to find it again.

Giving credit where credit is due will build your credibility and enhance your document. Moreover, when your writing is authentically yours, your audience will catch your enthusiasm, and you will feel more confident in the material you produce. Just as you have a responsibility in business to be honest in selling your product or service and avoid cheating your customers, so you have a responsibility in business writing to be honest in presenting your idea, and the ideas of others, and to avoid deceiving your readers with plagiarized material.

Ethical Writing

Throughout your career, you will be required to create many documents. Some may be simple and straightforward and some may be difficult and involve questionable objectives. Overall, there are a few basic points to adhere to whenever you are writing a professional document: do not mislead; do not manipulate; do not stereotype.

Do Not Mislead

This has more than one meaning to the professional writer. The main point is clear. When writing persuasively, do not write something that can cause the reader to believe something that is not true. This can be done by lying, misrepresenting facts, or just “twisting” numbers to favor your opinion and objectives. Once you are on the job, you cannot leave out numbers that show you are behind or over-budget on a project no matter how well it may work once it is completed. Be cautious when using figures, charts, and tables by making sure they visually represent quantities with accuracy and honesty. While this may seem easy, when the pressure is on and there are deadlines to meet, taking shortcuts and stretching the truth become ever more tempting.

Do Not Manipulate

Do not persuade people to do what is not in their best interest. A good writer with bad motives can twist words to make something sound like it is beneficial to all parties. The audience may find out too late that what you wrote only benefited you and actually hurt them. Make sure all stakeholders are considered and cared for when writing a persuasive document. It is easy to get caught up in the facts and forget all the people involved. Their feelings and livelihood must be considered with every appropriate document you create.

Do Not Stereotype

Most stereotyping takes place subconsciously now since workplaces are careful to not openly discriminate. It is something we may not even be aware we are doing, so it is always a good idea to have a peer or coworker proofread your documents to make sure you have not included anything that may point to discriminatory assumptions.

The not-for-profit organization Project Implicit has been researching subconscious biases for years and has developed several, free online tests . The tests can help you unearth and understand your own proclivities and prejudices. Knowing your biases may help you begin to overcome them.

Attributions

“Ethics and Documenting Sources” by Michael Beilfuss is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Writing Arguments in STEM Copyright © by Jason Peters; Jennifer Bates; Erin Martin-Elston; Sadie Johann; Rebekah Maples; Anne Regan; and Morgan White is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Feedback/errata.

Comments are closed.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

7-Ethical Use of Sources

1. Ethical Use and Citing Sources

You likely know that research projects always need a reference or a works cited page (also called a bibliography). But have you ever wondered why?

There are some big picture reasons that don’t often get articulated that might help you get better at meeting the citation needs of research projects. It’s helpful to understand both the theory behind citing, as well as the mechanics of it, to really become a pro.

Tip: How to Cite Sources

This section introduces the concept of citing sources, so you can begin your search for sources with it in mind. See the next section, How to Cite Sources for examples and the steps for citing appropriately.

In everyday life, we often have conversations where we share new insights with each other. Sometimes these are insights we’ve developed on our own through the course of our own everyday experiences, thinking, and reflection. Sometimes these insights come after talking to other people and learning from additional perspectives. When we relate the new things we have learned to our family, friends, or co-workers, we may or may not fill them in on how these thoughts came to us.

A stick figure drawing of a man giving a speech as an audience member in the crowd holds up a protest sign reading CITATION NEED.

Academic research leads us to the insight that comes from gaining perspectives and understandings from other people through what we read, watch, and hear. In academic work we must tell our readers who and what led us to our conclusions. Documenting our research is important because people rely on academic research to be authoritative, so it is essential for academic conversation to be as clear as possible. Documentation for clarity is a shared and respected practice, and it represents a core value of the academy called “academic integrity.” It is a way to distinguish academic conversations (or discourse) from everyday conversations (or discourse).

It is hard to talk about citation practices without considering some related concepts. Here are some definitions of those concepts that are often mentioned in assignments when citation is required.

What Is Academic Integrity?

Different universities have different definitions. Ohio State University uses this definition:

Academic integrity is a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to five fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. From these values flow principles of behavior that enable academic communities to translate ideals into action.

Please take a few moments to read the Office of Undergraduate Education web page that describes these values in more detail.

In other words, you must take full responsibility for your work, acknowledge your own efforts, and acknowledge the contributions of others’ efforts. Working/Writing with integrity requires accurately representing what you contributed, as well as acknowledging how others have influenced your work. When you are a student, an accurate representation of your knowledge is important because it will allow both you and your professors to know the extent to which you have developed as a scholar. Part of that development is evidenced by how you apply the rules for acknowledging the work of others.

What Is Academic Misconduct?

As you might imagine, academic misconduct is when you do not use integrity in your academic work. Academic misconduct includes many different unacceptable behaviors, but the one most relevant to what we are discussing here is submitting plagiarized work:

Submitting plagiarized work for an academic requirement. Plagiarism is the representation of another’s work or ideas as one’s own; it includes the unacknowledged word-for-word use and/or paraphrasing of another person’s work, and/or the inappropriate unacknowledged use of another person’s ideas.

To see the full definition of academic misconduct, refer to the Ohio State University Code of Student Conduct .

Note: Check Your Syllabi

You might have noticed a reference to the Code of Student Conduct on several of your syllabi, as faculty are asked to include this statement for your benefit:

It is the responsibility of the Committee on Academic Misconduct to investigate or establish procedures for the investigation of all reported cases of student academic misconduct. The term “academic misconduct” includes all forms of student academic misconduct wherever committed; illustrated by, but not limited to, cases of plagiarism and dishonest practices in connection with examinations. Instructors shall report all instances of alleged academic misconduct to the committee (Faculty Rule 3335-5-487). For additional information, see the Code of Student Conduct .

What Is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is defined by the OSU First Year Experience Office in this way:

At any stage of the writing process, all academic work submitted to the teacher must be a result of a student’s own thought, research or self-expression. When a student submits work purporting to be his or her own, but which in any way borrows organization, ideas, wording or anything else from a source without appropriate acknowledgment of the fact, he/she is engaging in plagiarism.

Take time to look at the full definition , which also describes another form of academic misconduct called “collusion.”

Plagiarism can be intentional (knowingly using someone else’s work and presenting it as your own) or unintentional (inaccurately or inadequately citing ideas and words from a source). It may be impossible for your professor to determine whether plagiarized work was intentional or unintentional. But in either case, plagiarism puts both you and your professor in a compromising position.

While academic integrity calls for work resulting from your own effort, scholarship requires that you learn from others. So in the world of academic scholarship you are actually expected to learn new things from others AND come to new insights on your own. There is an implicit understanding that as a student you will be both using others’ knowledge as well as your own insights to create new scholarship. To do this in a way that meets academic integrity standards you must acknowledge the part of your work that develops from others’ efforts. You do this by citing the work of others. You plagiarize when you fail to acknowledge the work of others and do not follow appropriate citation guidelines.

What Is Citing?

Citing, or citation, is a practice of documenting specific influences on your academic work. See How to Cite Sources for details.

In other words, you must cite all the sources you quote directly, paraphrase, or summarize as you:

Answer your research question
Convince your audience
Describe the situation around your research question and why the question is important
Report what others have said about your question

Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research Copyright © 2015 by Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Using Information Sources Ethically and Legally

Understanding Plagiarism
Avoidance Tips

When do I need to cite sources?

Does everything need to be cited, all you need to know about citing sources, get help from libraries and writing centers.

Always give credit where credit is due. If the words that you are including in your research belong to someone else, give credit.

Here is  a brief list of what needs to be credited or documented :

Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, website, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium
Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing
When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase
When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials
When you reuse or repost any digital media, including images, audio, video, or other media

There are certain things that do not need documentation or credit, including :

Writing your own lived experiences, your own observations and insights, your own thoughts, and your own conclusions about a subject
When you are writing up your own results obtained through lab or field experiments
When you use your own artwork, digital photographs, video, audio, etc.
When you are using "common knowledge," things like folklore, common sense observations, myths, urban legends, and historical events (but  not  historical documents)
When you are using generally accepted facts (e.g., pollution is bad for the environment) including facts that are accepted within particular discourse communities (e.g., in the field of composition studies, "writing is a process" is a generally accepted fact).

(From Plagiarism FAQs - Purdue Writing Lab )

The following chart from the UT Arlington Library Acknowledging Sources tutorial will guide you in your decision:

What is common knowledge? This refers to facts well known by many people and verifiable in five or more sources. Examples:

Bill Gates is the founder of the Microsoft Corporation.
There are 60 minutes in an hour.
Columbus is the capital of Ohio.
The whole is greater than the part.
Common Knowledge inforgraphic

If you have any doubts or questions, ask your professor or librarian. Err on the side of caution: when in doubt, cite!

The online guide Citing Your Sources provides information on citation, style guides, citation tools, and more.

Ask a Question (UC Libraries form) Email you reference question and get a response within 24 hours.
Subject librarians Contact a specialist in your discipline.

Writing Centers

Academic Writing Center (UC Clifton) Trained writing center tutors provide UC students with free writing assistance.

Schedule an appointment

AWC Tutor Feedback (submit a paper of six double-spaced pages or less and get feedback from a tutor within 48 hours)

Email: [email protected]

UC Clermont Learning Commons Support Services

Email: [email protected]

UC Blue Ash Writing and Study Skills Center

Submit your work (submit a paper of six double-spaced pages or less and get feedback from a tutor within 24-48 hours)

Email: [email protected]

<< Previous: Avoidance Tips
Next: Credits >>
Last Updated: Aug 27, 2024 1:46 PM
URL: https://guides.libraries.uc.edu/integrity

University of Cincinnati Libraries

PO Box 210033 Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0033

Phone: 513-556-1424

University of Cincinnati

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 ...

Great piece!!!

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Print Friendly

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, automatically generate references for free.

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.

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

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) .

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	Your participants are free to opt in or out of the study at any point in time.
Informed consent	Participants know the purpose, benefits, risks, and funding behind the study before they agree or decline to join.
Anonymity	You don’t know the identities of the participants. Personally identifiable data is not collected.
Confidentiality	You know who the participants are but keep that information hidden from everyone else. You anonymise personally identifiable data so that it can’t be linked to other data by anyone else.
Potential for harm	Physical, social, psychological, and all other types of harm are kept to an absolute minimum.
Results communication	You ensure your work is free of plagiarism or research misconduct, and you accurately represent your results.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.