Ethical Considerations in Research |

Types & Examples

Published on October 18, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari. Revised on December 2, 2022.

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

This article mainly focuses on research ethics in human research, but ethical considerations are
also important in animal research.

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Why do research ethics matter?

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.

Getting ethical approval for your study

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.

Types of ethical issues

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.

Ethical issue Definition

Voluntary Your participants are free to opt in or out of the study at any point in time.
participation

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
Ethical issue Definition

anyone else.

Potential for harm Physical, social, psychological and all other types of harm are kept to an absolute
minimum.

Results You ensure your work is free of plagiarism or research misconduct, and you accurately
communication represent your results.

Voluntary participation
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.

Example of voluntary participation

When recruiting participants for an experiment, you inform all potential participants that they are
free to choose whether they want to participate, and they can withdraw from the study anytime
without any negative repercussions.
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.

Informed consent
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.

Example of informed consent

You recruit participants outside a train station for a quick survey.
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

You also let them know that their data will be kept confidential, and they are free to stop filling
in the survey at any point for any reason. They can also withdraw their information by contacting
you or your supervisor.
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
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.

Example of data pseudonymization. You’re conducting a survey with college students. You ask
participants to enter demographic information including their age, gender identity, nationality,
and ethnicity. With all this information, it may be possible for other people to identify individual
participants, so you pseudonymize the data.
Each participant is given a random three-digit number. You separate their personally identifying
information from their survey data and include the participant numbers in both files. The survey
data can only be linked to personally identifying data via the participant numbers.

Confidentiality
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.

Example of confidentiality
To keep your data confidential, you take steps to safeguard it and prevent any threats to data
privacy. You store all signed consent forms in a locked file drawer, and you password-protect all
files with survey data.
Only other researchers approved by the IRB are allowed to access the study data, and you make
sure that everyone knows and follows your institution’s data privacy protocols.
Some research designs aren’t conducive to confidentiality, but it’s important to make all attempts
and inform participants of the risks involved.

Example of focus group confidentialityIn a focus group study, you invite five people to give their
opinions on a new student service in a group setting.
Before beginning the study, you ask everyone to agree to keep what’s discussed confidential and
to respect each other’s privacy. You also note that you cannot completely guarantee
confidentiality or anonymity so that participants are aware of the risks involved.

Potential for harm

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.
Example of potential for harm
In a study on stress, you survey college students on their alcohol consumption habits.
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.

You also provide participants with information about student counseling services and
information about managing alcohol use after the survey is complete.

Results communication
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
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.

Example of duplication.
You’re conducting a meta-analysis on whether working from home is related to better stress
management. You gather all studies on this topic that meet your search criteria.
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.

If you enter both data sets in your analyses, you get a different conclusion compared to when you
only use one data set. Including both data sets would distort your overall findings.

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.

Example of misconduct (MMR vaccine misinformation)

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and others published a now-debunked paper claiming that the
measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism in children.
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.

In reality, there is no risk of children developing autism from the MMR or other vaccines, as
shown by many large studies. Although the paper was retracted, it has actually received
thousands of citations.

Examples of ethical failures

Content warning
This section contains discussion of violence, racism, and ableism.
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.

Nazi experiments.

Nazi doctors and researchers performed painful and horrific experiments on thousands of

imprisoned people in concentration camps from 1942 to 1945.

These experiments were inhumane and resulted in trauma, permanent disabilities, or death in
many cases.

The participation of prisoners was always forced, as consent was never sought. Participants
often belonged to marginalized communities, including Jewish people, disabled people, and
Roma people.
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.

Tuskegee syphilis study

The Tuskegee syphilis study was an American public health study that violated research ethics
throughout its 40-year run from 1932 to 1972. In this study, 600 young black men
were deceived into participating with a promise of free healthcare that was never fulfilled.
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.

By the end of the study, 128 participants had died of syphilis or related complications. The study
ended only once its existence was made public and it was judged to be “medically unjustified.”
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.