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Survey Research Ethics

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Handbook of Survey Methodology for the Social Sciences

Abstract

Concerns over ethical considerations in survey research can be traced to reported abuses of human subjects during the Second World War. In response to these and other mistreatments of study participants, the research community developed a set of basic ethical principles related to investigations involving human subjects, the core of which are respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. In addition to the treatment of human subjects, ethical concerns in survey research involve designing studies in a way that best addresses the substantive issue being considered. Survey researchers face a number of choices in conducting any study, from the mode of data collection to sample selection, questionnaire construction, and the amount of resources devoted to collecting information from selected respondents. Ethical survey practice requires that these procedures be conducted in a way that the results accurately address the substantive concern of the research. In reporting survey results, researchers should be transparent and fully disclose their methods and conclusions so that they can be evaluated and replicated by other researchers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For more information on how one survey organization handles refusal conversion attempts, see the University of Indiana's Survey Research Center website at http://www.indiana.edu/~csr/phone_surveys.html.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Public Service and Policy Research, University of South Carolina, 1600 Hampton St., Room 411, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Robert W. Oldendick

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  1. Robert W. Oldendick
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Correspondence to Robert W. Oldendick .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, Tenth Ave. 899, New York, 10019, New York, USA

    Lior Gideon

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Oldendick, R.W. (2012). Survey Research Ethics . In: Gideon, L. (eds) Handbook of Survey Methodology for the Social Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3876-2_3

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