Brings together international scholars across the social and behavioural sciences and education to address those ethical issues that arise in the theory and practice of research within the technologically advancing and culturally complex world in which we live.

This open access textbook offers a practical guide into research ethics for undergraduate students in the social sciences. A step-by-step approach of the most viable issues, in-depth discussions of case histories and a variety of didactical tools will aid the student to grasp the issues at hand and help him or her develop strategies to deal with them. This book addresses problems and questions that any bachelor student in the social sciences should be aware of, including plagiarism, data fabrication and other types of fraud, data augmentation, various forms of research bias, but also peer pressure, issues with confidentiality and questions regarding conflicts of interest. Cheating, ‘free riding’, and broader issues that relate to the place of the social sciences in society are also included. The book concludes with a step-by-step approach designed to coach a student through a research application process.

Ethics in Social Science Research: Becoming Culturally Responsive provides a thorough grounding in research ethics, along with examples of real-world ethical dilemmas in working with vulnerable populations. Author Maria K. E. Lahman aims to help qualitative research students design ethically and culturally responsive research with communities that may be very different from their own. Throughout, compelling first person accounts of ethics in human research—both historical and contemporary—are highlighted and each chapter includes vignettes written by the author and her collaborators about real qualitative research projects.

Social scientists are unprepared for many of the ethical problems that arise in their research, and for criticisms of their ethics that seem to ignore such cherished scientific values as objectivity and freedom of inquiry. Yet, they possess method ological talent and insight into human nature that can be used to understand and resolve these problems. The contributors to this book demonstrate that criticism of the ethics of social research can stimulate constructive development of meth odology. Both volumes of The Ethics of Social Research were written for and by social scientists to show how ethical dilemmas arise in the day-to-day conduct of social research and how they can be resolved. The topics discussed in this book include ethical problems that arise in experiments and sample surveys; the companion volume deals with the ethical issues involved in fieldwork and in the regulation and publication of research. With candor and humor, many of the contributors describe lessons they have learned about themselves, their methods, and their research participants. Collectively, they illustrate that both humanists and detenninists are likely to encounter ethical dilemmas in their research, albeit different ones, and that a blending of detenninistic and humanistic approaches may be needed to solve these dilemmas. The aim of this book is to assist irwestigators in preparing to meet some of the ethical problems that await the unwary. It offers perspectives, values, and guidelines for anticipating problems and devising solutions.

Introduces students to ethical theory and philosophy. This work provides practical guidance on what ethical theory means for research practice; and, offers case studies to give real examples of ethics in research action.

Ethics in Social Research