Ethical Standards of the American Educational Research Association Essay

Ethical Standards of the American Educational Research Association - Essay Example As the paper highlights   the American Educational Research Association (AREA) publishes a comprehensive set of ethical standards used to guide the work of educational researchers. This paper will examine three of the most pressing and relevant ethical issues that face educational researchers. One of the most important issues of research ethics is research honesty. According to AREAs standards, "Educational researchers must not fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent authorship, evidence, data, findings, or conclusions". While this may seem an obvious transgression of research ethics, researchers may be tempted to compromise results in the face of scarce resources. Researchers may be tempted to borrow data without giving proper credit, or falsify data that they intuitively believe to be true, without having accomplished the research. In addition, political or social agendas may drive the research and results could be skewed to reflect the particular point of view of the researcher. All of these cases place the research in question and bring harm to a vulnerable population of students. This paper stresses that another key component of ethical educational research is the expectation of anonymity and privacy. AREAs ethical code states, "Informants and participants have a right to remain anonymous. This right should be respected when no clear understanding to the contrary has been reached". In other words, all participants have the expectation of privacy and anonymity. The subjects do not have to request that their data or test scores remain private, the ethical standards assure it. If the researcher wishes to make the information public, they must seek explicit permission from the participant. To protect the individual from harm, and the researcher from liability, the issue of informed consent must be completely resolved.