Research ethics in education

Ross Woods, 2018

Based on: Dooly, M., Moore, E., & Vallejo, C. (2017). Research ethics. In E. Moore & M. Dooly (Eds), Qualitative approaches to research on plurilingual education (pp. 351-362). Research-publishing.net. https://doi. org/10.14705/rpnet.2017.emmd2016.634

  1. Do no harm. Could it harm anybody? Could any ill effects be minimized?
  2. Who has the right to be fully informed of the research? E.g. reviewers, members of the ethics committee, participants, participants' parents and guardians?
  3. What information do they need? E.g.
    1. Purpose
    2. Scope
    3. Approach/method
    4. How the data will be collected and processed
    5. Contact details of researchers for any complaints or questions
    6. Anticipated risks
    7. Whether subjects will be compensated in any way
    8. How data will be made anonymous. E.g. removing the names of individuals and institutions, blurring faces in videos and images, deleting information that could be used to recognize subjects such as locations, names of cities, etc.
    9. How results will be used. E.g. academic publications, dissertations, conferences, teaching materials, policy documents.
  4. Get written, prior, informed consent from all involved parties in the research prior to implementing the research project.
  5. Subjects may opt out of the research at any stage.
    1. If opting out means that individuals would be unable to take part in educational activities, they could participate in the research but, if possible, no data will be collected.
    2. When filming whole groups, researchers will either avoid close-ups of subjects who have opted out, or delete those data.
  6. Ensure confidentiality of all research subjects, including sensitive data relating to race, ethnicity, religion, politics, health, or sexual orientation.
  7. Only authorized members of the immediate research team will have access to personal and raw data. Researchers should manage personal data to eliminate unauthorized access or use.
  8. Personal data will only be gathered and used for the study and no other purpose. No other personal data will be gathered.
  9. In international collaborations, the researchers should comply as closely as possible with the Ethics Statements of all the countries involved. The collaborating researcher in each country is responsible for complying with ethical standards for collecting and handling data in their country. If data is lawfully gathered in one country, that country might disallow its use for publication in collaboration with researchers in other countries with different laws.
  10. Online and telecollaborative data often crosses national, cultural, geopolitical boundaries and create legal problems:
    1. Different countries have different laws about online data. For example, is data located at the publisher, the server, or the respondent? Who actually owns it? What are the standards for cyber security?
    2. In ‘virtual ethnography’, researchers might not be able to get explicit individual consent to gather data. Legal rights to the data are unclear if the community is not ‘public’. What about social networks that claim to own all data posted on their websites as a condition of participation?
    3. Which colleagues or institutions own the research? Who needs to give permission for publication? Who needs to be listed as lead authors and co-authors in publications?
  11. Perhaps more questionable:
    1. Should participants or schools be entitled to view all research data before data processing begins?
    2. Should researchers be required to destroy or delete the data if the school or informant considers the data objectionable and presents a justifiable argument? Who decides whether an argument is justifiable?