Ethics Codes and Guidelines

Ethical guidelines are statements that communicate standards or criteria for behavior considered morally correct for a group or individual. These guidelines set expectations for behavior and are important tools for discerning whether a behavior is ethical. Ethics codes are a set of ethical guidelines held by an individual or group and generally appear in the form of a written document. Many professional organizations have ethics codes. Individuals engaged in communication research and scholarship have a professional responsibility to be familiar with and follow their respective codes of ethics and to adhere to guidelines for ethical research practices. The following paragraphs introduce readers to professional codes of ethics and provide an overview of specific codes important to professional communication scholarship and research.