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Currently, the conduction of research with the means of the internet has become a complex work that requires knowledge about how to do it properly without violating any laws. Naturally, poorly cited data from other published examinations and analyses can adversely affect the studies and their participants. Therefore, every scholar must be familiar with ethical issues that may occur in the investigation process using external sources from the internet.
Confidentiality Violation of the Newsgroup Participants
To begin with, researchers can occasionally violate the information confidentiality and anonymity of the participants with inadequate quotations from the original sources. For instance, in the case presented by Eysenbach and Till (2001), they elaborate on this possibility and mention the potential of powerful search engines such as Safari, Google, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge to provide the personal information of people who are quoted word for word. These engines could locate the index of the newsgroups even if the researcher who conducted the initial examination did not disclose the email addresses of these people (Eysenbach & Till, 2001). Naturally, this is not ethical to contribute to the violation of the confidentiality of individuals who have shared any information online, even if it is unintentional, considering that it has not been authorized by the actual author beforehand. Therefore, disclosing personal information may undermine researchers and make them look irresponsible and uneducated about ethical guidelines. As a result, this violation may negatively impact the participant’s social status due to potential dignitary harm.
Biased Selection of Participants Based on Their Social Statuses
Moreover, researchers may face ethical issues concerning the participant’s social status, which would complicate the ability to include people from different backgrounds for online interviews. To elaborate, many scholars opt for conducting the interviews via email, considering that they have numerous fruitful advantages, as in McGee’s (2008) study. For instance, the scholar employed this option of data gathering since individuals from different parts of the world could submit the requested questionnaires and answer proposed questions in-depth (McGee, 2008). As a result, people did not have to spend money commuting to different countries to have face-to-face interviews.
Not to mention that many participants might have felt less anxious when typing their answers instead of explaining their experiences of brain trauma to strangers in real life. However, the benefits mentioned above fell short compared to a significant drawback: only some are financially stable enough to purchase technological devices (McGee, 2008). Furthermore, only some individuals have an internet connection, restricting them from using their online mailboxes altogether. Hence, the exclusion of people from low-income families could have signaled purposeful discrimination and bias toward people with weak financial stability compared to wealthy participants. It is only ethical to select recruits based on their social status if the topic of the study is somehow connected to it. That is why the findings could have been undermined for their invalidity, and the scholar’s reputation could have been severely damaged.
Anonymity Violation as a Result of the Participants’ Technological Incompetence
In addition, researchers might unintentionally contribute to violating the participants’ confidentiality if the latter need to become more familiar with how emailing works. McGee’s (2008) study may have led to individuals unconsciously disclosing their personal information, such as email, address, and telephone number, which might further be missed by the researcher and included in the paper. Naturally, this ethical issue would result from a participant’s incompetence and a researcher’s inattentiveness. Thus, if the scholar did not check the gathered data for these errors a few times to ensure that everything was up to ethical guidelines’ standards, one might negatively impact the study’s validity. Undoubtedly, the participants could face the consequences of this moral issue because their information would be available, and thus, they could experience social embarrassment and even anxiety. In any case, it is impossible to determine whether the current situation is a consequence of technological incompetence or a direct violation of anonymity.
Proposing the Solutions for the Ethical Issues in the Research
As stated above, the online interviews via email exclude the possibility of people with low income participating in the research, which is a bias. Therefore, to avoid the ethical issue of discrimination in McGee’s (2008) research, it is critical to consider adjusting the chosen option for the interview by the author. Otherwise, the analysis of people from different communities apart from low-income families would be recognized as an ethical violation. In addition, there is no hint in the study of justifying the exclusion of low-income families for any acceptable reason. It would be biased for the researcher to discriminate against those who do not have the financial means to afford technological devices to share their experiences and opinions via online email (Mattan & Cloutier, 2020). In sum, it is advised to provide individuals with the means to have online questionnaires, which include mobile phones or laptops.
If one considers this situation from the side of legal standards, one can trace, although not obvious, the manifestation of hatred towards a particular group of people. In addition, such an omission violates professional standards since such a study must reflect the situation’s complete picture. Admittedly, this might be too expensive for the researcher, but one can offer to cover the bills for using computers in networking spaces. The scholar should also entertain the option of narrowing the examination scope to one country so that participants can have face-to-face surveys. This way, recruits would have an opportunity to come to a proposed location and answer questions about their experiences of, for example, brain trauma.
References
Eysenbach, G., & Till, J. E. (2001). Ethical issues in qualitative research on internet communities. BMJ, 323(7321), 1103–1105. Web.
Mattan, B. D., & Cloutier, J. (2020). A registered report on how implicit pro-rich bias is shaped by the perceiver’s gender and socioeconomic status. Royal Society Open Science, 7(8), 191232. Web.
McGee, P. (2008). Ethical issues in using the internet in research: Commentary. Research Ethics, 4(3), 117–119. Web.
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