Ethics in Studying Undergraduates

While I have previously learned a lot about ethics in research, particularly in my psychology courses, I found the guest speaker on ethics very interesting. I was intrigued by the number of students in the class who hadn't heard of several famous unethical studies, and by Mr. Sharpe's seeming belief that it was a large number of people. This is likely a case where I'm simply taking my own knowledge and background for granted - an interesting problem from a research and ethics perspective where awareness of bias is important in order to avoid unthinking mistakes.

My research topic is focused on information seeking behaviour, which means that my research will unavoidably lead to interaction with people. In order to best study my topic - undergraduate information seeking behaviour and engagement with medieval manuscripts - the most useful approach is likely engaging with undergraduate students in the context of medieval studies. This means that ethical considerations for my research will be considerable. I will have to ensure that my research does not at any point influence the students' studies or achieved grades, either by causing additional stress, interrupting workflow, influencing the instructor or markers, or negatively impacting learning. While it may be beneficial to compare students using digital sources and students using print sources throughout the course, enforcing the use of specific sources when the consequences are unknown is unlikely to be passed by an ethics board.

Ultimately I decided to pursue unstructured interviews and usability style post-task questionnaires in my methodology. While these may pose some risk to students, and a thorough examination by the ethics board is certainly necessary before undertaking the project, this should ultimately be a non-disruptive way to understand the research processes taking place throughout a course unobtrusively.

Beyond my relationship to my inevitable human subjects for this research, the monetization of research is always an ethical consideration. While my topic is not likely a very profitable or industry-influenced one, it is possible that publishers pursuing digitization or encouraging the use of print sources may attempt to influence or guide my research, particularly if I attempt to publish my resulting paper through that company. This is a fairly minor concern, but it is certainly necessary to be aware of the issue.