RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

58 THE ETHICS OF EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RESEARCH
Individual circumstances must be the final arbiter. As
far as possible it is better if the teacher can discuss the
research with all parties involved. On other occasions
it may be better for the teacher to develop a pilot study
and uncover some of the problems in advance of the
research proper. If it appears that the research is going
to come into conflict with aspects of school policy,
management styles, or individual personalities, it is
better to confront the issues head on, consult relevant
parties, and make rearrangements in the research
design where possible or necessary.
(Hitchcock and Hughes l995: 41)
Where a pilot study is not feasible it may be
possible to arrange one or two scouting forays
to assess possible problems and risks. By way of
summary, we refer the reader to Box 2.5.
The field of ethics
Whatever the specific nature of their work, social
researchers must take into account the effects of
the research on participants, and act in such a
way as to preserve their dignity as human beings:
responsibility to participants. Such is ethical
behaviour. Indeed, ethics has been defined as ‘a
matter of principled sensitivity to the rights of
others, and that ‘while truth is good, respect for
human dignity is better’ (Cavan 1977: 810).
Kimmel (1988) has pointed out that it is
important we recognize that the distinction
between ethical and unethical behaviour is not
dichotomous, even though the normative code
of prescribed (‘ought’) and proscribed (‘ought
not’) behaviours, as represented by the ethical
standards of a profession, seem to imply that it
is. Judgements about whether behaviour conflicts
with professional values lie on a continuum that
ranges from the clearly ethical to the clearly
unethical. The point here is that ethical principles
are not absolute, generally speaking, though some
maintain that they are as we shall see shortly, but
must be interpreted in the light of the research
context and of other values at stake.
Of course, a considerable amount of research
does not cause pain or indignity to the participants,
self-esteem is not necessarily undermined nor
confidences betrayed, and the social scientist
may only infrequently be confronted with an
unresolvable ethical dilemma. Where research is
ethically sensitive, however, many factors may
need to be taken into account and these may
vary from situation to situation, for example:
the age of those being researched; whether the
subject matter of the research is a sensitive area;
whether the aims of the research are in any
way subversive (vis-à-vis subjects, teachers, or
institution); the extent to which the researcher
and researched can participate and collaborate in
planning the research; how the data are to be
processed, interpreted, and used. Laing (1967: 53)
offers an interesting, cautionary view of data where
he writes that they are ‘not so much given as taken
out of a constantly elusive matrix of happenings.
We should speak of capta rather than data’.
Sources of tension
Non-maleficence, beneficence and human
dignity
The first tension, as expressed by Aronson and
Carlsmith (1969), is that which exists between two
sets of related values held by society: a belief in the
value of free scientific inquiry in pursuit of truth
and knowledge, and a belief in the dignity of individuals
and their right to those considerations that
follow from it. It is this polarity that we referred
to earlier as the costs/benefits ratio and by which
‘greater consideration must be given to the risks to
physical, psychological, humane, proprietary and
cultural values than to the potential contribution
of research to knowledge’ (Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada
1981), i.e. the issue of ‘non-maleficence’ (where
no harm is wished upon subjects or occurs) (see
http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/
9780415368780 – Chapter 2, file 2.3. ppt).
Non-maleficence (do not harm) is enshrined
in the Hippocratic oath, in which the principle
of primum non nocere (first of all, do no harm) is
held as a guiding precept. So also with research.
At first sight this seems uncontentious; of course
we do not wish to bring harm to our research