9 Additional factors to consider in research
Respect for vulnerable people
Researchers must maintain high ethical obligations toward vulnerable people, such as those with diminished competence and/or decision-making capacity. For example, children, institutionalised people, or others who are vulnerable and entitled, on grounds of human dignity, caring, and solidarity and fairness, to special protection against abuse, exploitation, or discrimination. The researcher must develop a special set of procedures to protect vulnerable people.
Respect for privacy and confidentiality
Standards of privacy and confidentiality are considered fundamental to human dignity. Such standards protect access to, control and dissemination of personal information. Researchers must value the rights of privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity for their participants.
Minimising harm
Researchers have a duty to avoid, prevent, or minimise harms to others. Research participants must not be subjected to unnecessary risks of harm and their participation must be essential to achieving scientific and societally important objectives that cannot be achieved with their participation.
Maximising benefit
Researchers have a duty of to maximise net benefits for the research participants, individuals and society. In most research, this means the results benefit society and the advancement of knowledge.
Key takeaways
- A human subject is defined as “a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research obtains: 1) data through intervention or interaction with the individual, or 2) identifiable private information).”
- Non-human research subjects, on the other hand, are objects or entities that investigators manipulate or analyse in the process of conducting research.
- Research on human subjects in underpinned by moral and ethical principles. Increasingly, there is an expectation that research on non-human animals will also be underpinned by such moral and ethical principles.
- There are five key ethical components a researcher must focus on as it relates to the research participants:
- confidentiality
- conflict of interest
- informed consent
- protection of identities
- respect for human dignity.
This chapter is adapted from “Guiding Ethical Principles” in “An Introduction to Research Methods in Sociology” by Valerie A. Sheppard, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
