Ethics in Communication Research

ETHICS IN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

Running Head : Ethics in Communication Research

ETHICS IN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

In APA style

2008

Ethics in Communication Research

Introduction

Researches are practically the basis of development for modern knowledge and development . In our modern research s and articles , it is compulsory for new studies to elaborate on already existing researches or at least to mention where the new study position itself toward existing studies in the same field . This is obvious since research will lead to decision making that require exact information (Holmes

Institute , 2007

Therefore , students , professors and researchers in general often quote or use previous researches as foundation of their newly found theory or application of existing theories . In other words , they should comply with ethical actions , which refer to right things to do and write them in the company 's ethics codes (Kidder , 2002 BSR Staff , 2004

Ironically , while doing so , most of these researchers are generally insensitive to the validity of existing researches . Despite the absence of any statements regarding the fulfillment of research ethics within the process of conducting the research in any part of the or article , readers generally assume that research ethics are fulfilled nevertheless . In this however , I would like to briefly discuss research ethics and how they are applied in present communication researches and provide several suggestions on how they should proceed from this point

Relationship with Research Participants

There are actually various aspects of research activities which require ethical concerns , for example : ethics in relationship with research participants , ethics in the process of collecting data , ethics in analysis of data , ethics of social impact , etc . This will particularly address ethics within relationship with research participants

II .1 . Deception in Communication Researches

Oxford Advanced Learner ' Dictionary (1989 ) defines ethics as a system of moral principles and rule of conduct . It means that moral might apply not only for human being but also for organizations and their entire members . As implied earlier , there are few studies that are actually focusing on ethical issues in communication researches . These few studies however , delivered revealing results when focus on the role of `deception ' in communication research . Deception implied in this chapter is intended to address the activity of delivering misleading information to research participants or deliberately withholding vital information from research participants (Reese Fremouw , 1984

The research on communication research ethics revealed that the use of deception in most communication researches are generally vital nevertheless , we tend to take them for granted . Moreover , most of the researchers generally avoid the talk regarding the use of deception in extracting relevant data for research . Ironically , a small survey indicated that almost 70 respondents believed that communication researches `require ' the use of deception to generate original behavior from research subjects . 55 of the respondents however , believed that we are not overusing deception as a research tool , only 14 do (Gordon 1983

Discussions regarding the ethical justification of misinforming research subjects however , still exist in the academic realm . Some of these discussions...