CITI Certificate
SARI Requirements
What ethical issues do you consider to be most important to the conduct of institutional research studies and why?
Institutional research is all about helping colleges and universities make decisions in admissions, financial aid, curriculum, enrollment management, staffing, student life, athletics, alumni relations, and more. With this research studying all different aspects of the institution, that comes with many different standards and study methods that researchers are using. The methods may vary based on what aspect of the university the researcher is studying and the standards may vary based on the methods that the researcher is using. With all the variety in processes and standards, many different ethical issues could come up.
I believe that one of the most important ethical issues that could arise would be misconduct within the research process. These research studies have such a huge impact on the institution and sometimes the employment of that researcher, so misconduct could happen for a variety of reasons. Misconduct can consist of falsifying results, fabricating data, or even plagiarism and they are all very serious issues. Institutional researchers are under so much pressure so misconduct could be a result of the need to produce positive results to the university’s administration. Plagiarism is something that could easily happen with forgetting to cite a source or even intentionally using others research to support findings. With misconduct being a result of pressure or something that is considered an “easy mistake,” the frequency of this occurring is alarming.
Another ethical issue that could arise is the methods in which the research is conducted. In my opinion, I don’t believe this is as “important” as misconduct with institutional research, because the methods typically revolve around collecting student data. In my previous experience with institutional research, this data was usually collected based on student actions and success versus gathering responses from surveys that could result in unusable data. However institutional researchers who may need to gather data by directly working with students or observing them could use methods that are not considered ethical by all. Some students are still minors during some portion of their time in college and of course researchers need to be careful of how they interact with those students without parent permission. In addition to that students are in a fragile point in their life during college, since it’s often the first time they are on their own and going through an important stage of their life. So the methods that researchers use must take into consideration all this along with using ethical guidelines to properly conduct their studies. With all this to consider, the wrong method has a chance of being used and many ethical issues could arise that cause harm to the students being studied and also impact the results in way that void their reliability.
Institutional research is all about helping colleges and universities make decisions in admissions, financial aid, curriculum, enrollment management, staffing, student life, athletics, alumni relations, and more. With this research studying all different aspects of the institution, that comes with many different standards and study methods that researchers are using. The methods may vary based on what aspect of the university the researcher is studying and the standards may vary based on the methods that the researcher is using. With all the variety in processes and standards, many different ethical issues could come up.
I believe that one of the most important ethical issues that could arise would be misconduct within the research process. These research studies have such a huge impact on the institution and sometimes the employment of that researcher, so misconduct could happen for a variety of reasons. Misconduct can consist of falsifying results, fabricating data, or even plagiarism and they are all very serious issues. Institutional researchers are under so much pressure so misconduct could be a result of the need to produce positive results to the university’s administration. Plagiarism is something that could easily happen with forgetting to cite a source or even intentionally using others research to support findings. With misconduct being a result of pressure or something that is considered an “easy mistake,” the frequency of this occurring is alarming.
Another ethical issue that could arise is the methods in which the research is conducted. In my opinion, I don’t believe this is as “important” as misconduct with institutional research, because the methods typically revolve around collecting student data. In my previous experience with institutional research, this data was usually collected based on student actions and success versus gathering responses from surveys that could result in unusable data. However institutional researchers who may need to gather data by directly working with students or observing them could use methods that are not considered ethical by all. Some students are still minors during some portion of their time in college and of course researchers need to be careful of how they interact with those students without parent permission. In addition to that students are in a fragile point in their life during college, since it’s often the first time they are on their own and going through an important stage of their life. So the methods that researchers use must take into consideration all this along with using ethical guidelines to properly conduct their studies. With all this to consider, the wrong method has a chance of being used and many ethical issues could arise that cause harm to the students being studied and also impact the results in way that void their reliability.