Research Ethics and Social Values

Ethics Connection to a Value System

Ethics involves a judgment of the goodness or badness of a decision or action, but how is the determination of good or bad decided? It is determined by a set of principles of right conduct, and these principles are based on a value system. Values are the things considered to be worthwhile. Throughout life, individuals learn what the culturally [Page 1441]accepted morals are and bring those standards into their professional lives as well. Communication researchers utilize the ethics that have guided the decisions made in other aspects of their lives to affect the research being contemplated and ultimately conducted.

In addition, communication researchers exposed to and practicing in the same value system may be trained to think of ethics in similar ways. It seems, then, that if there are agreed-upon values that are influencing ethical decisions, all communication researchers would act in the same manner. However, that is not the case. Individual researchers, and teams of researchers, may share similar ethical norms, yet they often interpret them differently. This is often determined by the theoretical ethical orientation to which one subscribes.

Theoretical Ethical Orientations

Arguably, all behaviors have ethical overtones, and researchers make decisions based, in part, on their ethical orientation. Broadly, ethical orientations run along a continuum from making decisions based on outcomes (i.e., “the ends justify the means”) to actions (i.e., “means are in and of themselves important”). Some researchers subscribe to the idea that the outcome of their research is worth the risk that any choice along the way may have. Sometimes termed utilitarianism, consequentialism, or teleology, researchers work to reap the greatest good for the greatest number. By engaging in a cost-benefit analysis, researchers at this end of the continuum maintain that as long as a positive outcome outweighs, or at least balances, the negative means to get there, an ethical choice was made.

At the other end of the spectrum are researchers who follow a nonconsequential or deonotological approach. This more relativistic perspective requires researchers to consider individual actions and outcomes as opposed to focusing more on the bigger picture. Here the means are just as important as the ends and therefore, every action must be judged on its ethical implications. During the research process, researchers must make several decisions that are inherently ethical choices. Regardless of where along the continuum researchers reside, they will face a number of similar ethical choices that they must make that are likely to affect the outcome of the research.

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