Research Participants and Research ethics

1. Dr. Pallawi Bulakh
M.Sc.M.Phil.Ph.D.NET

2. Contents
 3.1 Internet Research topics
 3.2 Literature Review on the Internet
 3.3 The Internet and Research strategies and methods
 3.4 Internet research, the Law and Ethics
 3.7 Projects (Design, creation and Ethics)
 3.8 Evaluating research ethics
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3. Background of Internet and
WWW
 What is Internet?
 Computer Network
 Communication Protocols
 Arpanet
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4. Internet research topics
 Current areas of technological research include
 Mobile or ubiquitous computing,
 The semantic web,
 Grid computing, search engines,
 Web services and web engineering.
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5. Basics of internet
 Through the 1970s and 1980s, various communication
protocols were developed and agreed, and increasing
numbers of educational and research institutions made use
of the internet.
 In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee at the European Laboratory for
Particle Physics (CERN), proposed a new protocol for
information distribution which became the basis of the
World Wide Web
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6. www
 The World Wide Web Consortium was established in 1994
to promote and develop common standards for the web.
 It is based on hypertext,
 In the 1990s, easy-to-use web browsers were developed.
 Commercial uses of the Internet and web were allowed
from the early 1990s
 There was a ‘dot.com boom’,
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7. Use Of The Internet For….
 Buying and selling goods and participating in online auctions;
 Sending email messages electronically to recipients around the
world;
 Sharing views on a topic with others around the globe via
discussion lists;
 Using internet relay chat (IRC) to talk to other people in online,
real-time sessions in virtual rooms;
 Playing adventure games with multiple players (known as
muds);
 Listening to radio broadcasts from around the world via
internet radio.
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8. Internet research topics
 How business organizations can make use of the Internet
and web.
 Organizations are developing applications that enable
business to consumer transactions (B2C) or support
transactions between themselves and other businesses
such as suppliers (B2B).
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9. Internet Research Topics
 Email
 Life changing scenario
 Time spending
 Email addiction
 Spam mail or junk mail
 There are research opportunities to examine
email behavior and develop better systems that
help users to handle and organize the use
number of emails dispatched and received.
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10. Internet Research Topics
 Many IS researchers are interested in how business
organizations can make use of the Internet and web.
 Development of applications like B2C and B2B.
 research opportunities in developing internet-based
systems for businesses, and evaluating the use of such
systems.
 New business models for making money
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11. Internet Research Topics
 There are many research opportunities in investigating
how individuals, families, groups, communities,
governments and societies use such information systems
— which are often based upon the Internet and web.
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12. Internet Research Topics
 information and communication technologies can be used to
foster and strengthen social cohesion, overcome cultural or
geographic isolation and combat social exclusion or
deprivation.
 Governments have also noticed the spread of the Internet and
web and are interested in how the technology can be used to
improve the service they provide to citizens (e-government).
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13. Internet Research Topics
 As websites have developed from the simple initial ‘cyber-
brochures’ to today’s sophisticated web-based information
systems.
 Artists are also exploring the possibilities of Internet art.
 Its information and communication technologies that enable
new types of play, such as online games, new ways of
communication, such as blogging and new means of teaching,
such as distance learning.
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14. Internet Research Topics in CS
and IT
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15. The Internet and Literature
Review
 Many journals, conferences and authors put their articles and
papers online;
 An online catalogue tells you about the holdings (books and
journals) of a particular library;
 Online databases developed for academic researchers allow
you to enter key words related to your area of interest and find
previously published academic research on their topic:
 Web gateways or portals developed by academics provide
links to other useful websites on particular subjects.
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16. 16

17. The Internet and Research
strategies and methods
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18. 18

19. 19

20. Internet Research, the Law
and Ethics
 Every research should be lawful/legal and ethical.
 For internet, no single country’s law is applicable.
 What may be legal Internet behavior in one country may be
illegal in another.
 Downloading images without permission from a website
might be considered acceptable in your country, but illegal
in the country where a reviewer of your research, or the
owner of the image, lives.
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21. Internet Research, the Law
and Ethics
 Accessing any website on the internet may be unlawful or
illegal in some countries.
 In every country, the law about the Internet lags behind the
people finding new uses for it.
 law about the Internet is still being developed.
 codes of conduct for doing ethical Internet research are still
under discussion.
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22. Ethics committee expectations
 Researchers have obtained informed consent from any human
participants.
 Ensured anonymity and confidentiality for the participants.
 Appropriate credits are given to respective authors.
 Contents with copyrights are used with appropriate
permissions.
 The legal liability of software developers for the systems they
design and create.
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23. Rights of People Directly Involved
 Participants of the research process-
 How they should act or be treated.
 These participants include-
 The people directly involved in your research — the people you
interview or observe, Or ask to complete a questionnaire or supply you
with documents;
 You as the researcher, along with your colleagues if you are in a research
team;
 The members of the academic community who read, review and learn
from your research;
 People who may use or be affected by any computer-based product you
design and create.
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24. Do’s and don’ts
 Treat everyone involved in your research, whether directly
or indirectly, fairly and with honesty- be an ethical
researcher.
 Clear understanding of ethical and unethical practice.
 Ethical clearance of the research should get done before
starting the research.
 Ethics committee report.
 people affected by the research in any way will not be harmed and
will be treated fairly and with dignity.
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25. The law and the research
 The specified data protection rights of individuals, and the duties of
organizations And researchers who hold personal data on individuals;
 Whether it is permissible to offer a prize draw to encourage people to
participate in your research;
 Intellectual property rights, for example, who owns the right to an image
you want to use in your research, and who has the copyright of your own
thesis or other publications or any software you produce;
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26.  Restrictions on the kinds of technology you are allowed to use and
investigate, for example, whether your country allows unrestricted
access to the internet, if you are permitted to use encryption
software, or whether you may share your technological innovations
with colleagues based in other countries.
 The legal liability of software developers for the systems they design
and create..
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27. Rights of People Directly Involved
 For experiments, they are often called the research
subjects;
 For surveys, they are often called the research
respondents;
 For case studies and ethnography, they are often called
research informants, members or participants;
 For action research, they are often called the research
participants or, especially in the more emancipator forms
of action research, co-researchers.
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28. The rights of participants
 Right not to participate
 Right to withdraw
 Right to give informed consent
 Right to anonymity
 Right to confidentiality
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29. Responsibilities of an Ethical
Researcher
 No unnecessary intrusion
 Behave with integrity
 Follow appropriate professional codes of conduct
 No plagiarism
 Be an ethical reviewer
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30. No unnecessary intrusion
 Researchers should not intrude unnecessarily into the
participants’ activities.
 Never ask questions for which you don’t really need the
answers.
 Unnecessary questions should be omitted.

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31. Behave with integrity
 An ethical researcher will record data accurately and fully.
 This means not keeping quiet about data that does not
support your case, or not manipulating data to present the
picture you want.
 True to results obtained.
 If on a computer you should think about how lack of
password security, insecure networks, power failures, poor
backup procedures, hackers and viruses might
compromise your data.
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32. Follow appropriate professional
codes of conduct
 Most professional bodies have produced codes of conduct.
 These codes capture the profession’s commitments and
responsibilities, to help members make ethical decisions.
 Even if you are not a paid-up member of any professional
body, you can be guided by their codes.
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33. No plagiarism
 You should not pass off someone else’s work as if it were your
own.
 You should give full credit to the original author, with enough
information in the reference so that any subsequent reader can
find the same material.
 Avoid ‘self-plagiarism’
 Inform the editor of the journal at the time of paper submission that an
earlier version was presented at a conference;
 Show by a footnote in the published journal article the conference where
the earlier version was presented.
 Do not submit the same work to two different places at the
same time.
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34. Examples of professional codes of conduct
relevant to IS and computing research
 ACM Association for Computing Machinery
 www.acm.org
 AolR Association of Internet Researchers
 www.aoir.org
 AIS Association for Information Systems
 www.aisnetorg
 APAAmerican Psychological Association
 www.apa.org
 ASA = American Sociological Association
 www.asanet.org
 BCS British Computer Society
 www.bcs.org.uk
 BPS British Psychological Society 34

35. Be an ethical reviewer
 Established as a researcher you might be asked to review
manuscripts submitted for conference presentation or
journal publication.
 Carry out reviews as promptly as possible.
 Maintain the confidentiality of the content of the paper you
are reviewing.
 Write the review in a professional way.
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36. Design and Creation Projects
and Ethics
 IT systems offer various temptations for unethical or even
unlawful acts, whether committed by researchers or the
clients or sponsors of research.
 Ease of access and copying:
 Privacy and anonymity:
 New means of data gathering:
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41. Evaluating Research Ethics
 Do the researchers discuss the ethics of their research and whether
they were guided
 by any code of ethical conduct? If not, how does that affect your
confidence in the
 research?
 Do the researchers tell us of any ethical dilemmas they faced and
how they resolved
 them?
 Are there additional ethical issues you think the researchers would
have needed to
 address?
 Overall, how ethically do you think the researchers behaved?
 How effectively do you think the ethics of the research has been
reported?
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