Assignment Unit 22: Research Ethics
UNIT 22: In this assignment, you will reflect on the ethical dimension of conducting
research
Anonymity; Confidentiality; Debriefing; Informed consent; Plagiarism; Social relevance (of
research)
1) Researchers have obligations towards society, towards those paying for their research, towards
other scientists and towards participants. What are the main ethical rules towards other
scientists which a researcher must follow?
2) What are the main ethical rules towards participants of a study which a researcher must follow?
Suppose, you are preparing the data collection for your master thesis. Participants have to fill out a
short online questionnaire. According to ethical rules for research, you must ask the participants for
active and documented informed consent. This implies that participants must actively show their
willingness to participate in the research. This can be done by signing a form, but digital methods
(e.g. ticking a box, pressing a button or clicking a link) can be acceptable alternatives. Such action
should obviously be performed after the relevant information about the study has been provided.
Your supervisor asks you to prepare such an informed consent information sheet.
3) What kind of information should be provided in advance to the participants? Mention at least five
topics. Check out this website: https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/research/ethics/informed-consent-
procedure/
4) Compare you answer at point 3 with following the example of an informed consent for a master
thesis project.1 Are all topics covered? Did the student forget something?
1
See the file Ethics informed consent_Chapter4.pdf
Topic addressed?
Topic Yes No
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5) Compare the last part of the above-mentioned informed consent form (below the stars) with the
informed consent template of the BMS ethics committee at Canvas (download Unit 22 - Informed-
consent-form-template UT-BMS.docx). What is the main difference?
6) Examine the following research studies and decide whether the study needs a review by the BMS
ethics committee: https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/research/ethics/.
Yes No
a As part of a class assignment, students will survey other
students about their sleep and exercise habits.
b A researcher is interested in the effects of social influence on
public compliance. Participants will be seated in a room with
two other people and shown images of lines of differing
lengths. They will be asked to estimate whether the lines
match in length. Unbeknownst to the participant, two
confederates of the study will consistently provide wrong
answers.
c A researcher proposes to use data from a colleague’s
database to conduct secondary analyses. Specifically, the
researcher will gain accesses to coded data regarding work
satisfaction and turnover rates.
d A researcher is interested in study habits and grade point
average of high school students.
e A research study examines judgments about wrongdoing.
Participants are asked to read scenarios about different
crimes and make judgments about the severity of the crime
and how much blame the criminal deserves.
f A researcher wants to study whether the smoking habits of
physicians is associated with their stop-smoking advice for
patients. He asks five physicians to provide feedback on the
concept version of the online questionnaire.
g A researcher explores moods and cognitive performance by
asking people to watch stand-up comedy clips or horror movie
clips subsequent to completing a cognitive ability assessment.
<< End of the assignment >>
