Instructions: Your first post in this discussion must be 250 words. It must be made in the first week of class by 11:59pm ET on Sunday. It is used to confirm your entry into the course. Please respond to more than 2 other students. Responses should be a minimum of 100 words and include direct questions. If you do not write a 250 word first post in this discussion within the first week, you will be dropped from the course.
1)This is the first post
Why are ethical considerations so important in research?
Ethical considerations are important in research because when you publish findings from your research you have a responsibility to the public that will be reading this information. There is a responsibility of putting out truthful, fact based information that supports moral and social values (Resnick, 2015). Other ethical considerations in research include: taking care to not plagiarize and not duplicating other researchers work, not releasing confidential information, keeping research objective, and ensuring all sources used within the research are credible.
How is paid research as opposed to unpaid research viewed? Why is there a difference?
Although there are many reasons to pay participants in research there are opposing views that feel as if paying participants will skew results. There are people that feel as if offering monetary compensation to participate in research is essentially recruitment for lower income individuals, which would could create an ethical issue. This could create a disproportionate sample.
The purpose of paying participants would be to ensure they are being fairly compensated for whatever time is being spent as well as money being spent on gas to travel to wherever the research is being conducted.
Can people be objective if they are paid to conduct research?
People can absolutely be objective if they are paid to conduct research. Everyone has their own reasons for participating in research. The objective participant will have a true interest in the purpose of the research and believe in the importance of the end goal of the research. Payment should only be used to ensure that time and money spent in the process of the research is fairly compensated. Proper interviews should be conducted to ensure participants do not have ulterior motives while participating in research.
Have you seen any ethical issues in your life or place of business?
I have seen many ethical issues while at my job. I have seen supervisors take credit for their subordinates work while never crediting them for any of the work they did.
I’ve also seen co-workers use other’s work to teach classes while never crediting the original author for the material being used.
References:
Resnick, D. B. (2015) What is Ethics in Research and Why is it Important? Responsible Conduct of Research, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press).
2) this is the second post
Why are ethical considerations so important in research?
Following ethical guidelines will ensure that your research is authentic and error-free, and will allow people to be able to trust your work and see your credibility. You must adhere to ethical guidelines also while presenting your findings in your manuscript. Your research must be bias free, neutral and should not push a personal agenda.
How is paid research as opposed to unpaid research viewed?
In my personal experience, participants that were promised with an incentive were always more likely to take our surveys seriously. Meanwhile, participants that were not promised any incentive would just randomly answer the questionnaires without much thought and sometimes would put random answers. But there could be a problem in this structure, that would be that paid participants would answer in a manner that they think would align with the surveyor’s desired result.
Why is there a difference? Can people be objective if they are paid to conduct research?
“It might reduce non-response. Some folks are more likely to say yes to spend an hour with you when you offer them a thank you present.” (Stecklov, 2017)
“But Stecklov and co. also give us some arguments why this could go the other way. First of all, since the enumerator is now giving them a gift, respondents may be more inclined to try and find the answers they think the enumerator is looking for. For their second reason, they cite the experimental work on extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation and how turning to this financial extrinsic motivation may lower accuracy/effort on the part of the respondents.” (Goldstein, 2018)
https://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/if-you-pay-your-survey-respondents-you-just-might-get-different-answer
https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rssa.12333
Have you seen any ethical issues in your life or place of business?
I have seen ethical issues at work such as favoritism, bias, racial issues.
3) this is the third post
Ethical considerations are important in research because if there are a history of unethical companies or people, it can create confusion if the research is accurate. In my line of work as a vehicle mechanic there is a lot of information out there that mechanics are shady. A small mechanic shop with unethical decision making would not last long once word spreads. Customers tend to do research on businesses before looking and paying for a service. Therefore, it is critical to run a business with ethical considerations in mind or the research to come will haunt you. This can lead to paid research and unpaid research. Filling out a simple survey for the mechanic shop for leaving a five-star review and receive five dollars off your bill could be viewed as paid research. This can encourage customers to leave five-star reviews even if the service was not five stars. Looking deeper paid research can be a great tool to speed up the research and data collecting process for business improvement. “Paid crowdsourcing platforms provide requester with tools that promote their tasks to be completed by someone in a timely fashion, at equal or better quality than a full-time workforce” (Borromeo & Toyama 2016). Unpaid research is heavily relied on volunteers and the data may not always be the best. If you look at most receipts from big box stores that could be considered unpaid research as the company is advertising surveys to gather data for the company. The catch is how many people fill out the survey to provide the company with data without receiving a reward. Paid research is typically more favored vs unpaid. This is because time is valuable, and most people do not want to work for free. For the company’s sake there is a benefit to having a balance of paid and unpaid research to go off. I believe that paid research will tend to be more objective because that person is being paid to provide data. If the experience is right, then it is likely the company will come back for future paid research. The first ethical issue that comes to my mind is military spending as we reach the end of the fiscal year. Typically, the motto is spending all the money, or the budget will get cut next year. This creates the debate of spending money to just spend money. Did the unit really need 300 flashlights due to being worried that next year they need all the budget money. It is an ethical debate of buying possible items that are not needed and spending the money to keep same budget for the next year.
Borromeo, R. M., & Toyama, M. (2016). An investigation of unpaid crowdsourcing. Human-Centric Computing and Information Sciences, 6(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13673-016-0068-z
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