Ethics and social science research : a survey of social science researchers' experiences of ethically challenging incidents and ethics review.

Abstract

This study aimed to profile social science researchers' experiences of ethically challenging incidents and ethics review and to consider these experiences in terms of the two institutions from which participants were selected. Data was gathered by means of an email survey sent to social science researchers working in both a university and a research organisation. The findings reveal that ethically challenging incidents involving privacy, confidentiality and anonymity, harm, beneficence, poor science, role conflict, informed consent, recruitment of participants and publication were encountered frequently by social science researchers. While respondents reported both positive and negative experiences of ethics review, researchers at the university reported significantly more ethically challenging incidents and negative experiences of ethics review than did researchers from the research organisation.