1. Issues of ethics and integrity are an integral part of the research process and must be explored as the research project is designed and developed.
2. Researchers have three broad responsibilities: a scientific responsibility, a responsibility for developing and conducting research that will yield knowledge worth knowing, and a responsibility for verifying or validating the data they collect.
3. Three principles-beneficence, respect for persons, and justice-must be simultaneously upheld.
4. Universities and colleges have institutional review boards, or human subjects committees, that review the research proposals of both professors and students to determine if the rights and welfare of research participants are being adequately protected.
5. Obtaining informed consent, or a research participants' agreement to participate in the research project, is almost always required.
6. Informed consent contains information about the research procedures, including any possible risks and benefits.
7. Informed consent should be written in language participants can easily understand, and each participant should receive a copy.
8. Researchers use deception to purposely mislead participants when it is necessary for participants to be naive about the purpose of a study, or when telling participants all of the information beforehand would trigger unnatural responses.
9. Upholding confidentiality and anonymity of research participants during the collection of data is another ethical principle to which researchers must subscribe.
10. Videotaping and audiotaping participants as part of research procedures can be done only with their express knowledge and consent.
11. Debriefing gives researchers the opportunity to provide participants with additional knowledge about the research topic or procedure, especially when deception is used.
12. The ethical issues of ensuring accuracy, protecting intellectual property rights, and protecting the identities of individuals in research reports are researcher responsibilities.
