Research ethics

If your research portfolio involves people or animals, then it is likely that there are ethical considerations in your research design. As undergraduate coursework students, you are considered as trainee researchers, and aren’t required to send your research proposals to an ethics committee unless you intend to take the research further, such as for publication to an academic journal. However, you should be aware of, and act within the framework of ethical research.

Example applications

The ANU has a number of ethics committees responsible to approving and investigating ethical conduct of research. For most research in the

Research School of Engineering, ethics approval is not required as testing is done on inanimate objects. However, in biomedical engineering and user-centred design, there are ethical concerns about how people are used in research.

Steps

IDEO have a fantastic resource for Design Research Ethics. This is a must-read, and covers in easy-to-read terms three principles: respect, responsibility and honesty. It also includes an overview of ethical guidelines, such as the planning and preparation of a research project, concerns around gathering information, and using and sharing data.

For researchers applying for ethics approval at ANU, the key ethical concerns in human research involve: informed consent, confidentiality, privacy, security of the data, recruitment of participants, incentives, recruitment of vulnerable people, providing feedback to participants, and dealing with complaints.

Key concepts

• an overview of what the key issues are for research ethics
• examples of what ethical concerns might arise for conducting research in your DLab theme
• advice to the student engineer on how to approach a research project in an ethical way

Core resources

• IDEO’s Little Book of Design Research Ethics (email sign-up required){: .link-ext target=”_blank” }
• ANU’s Human Ethics - Key ethical concerns (website){: .link-ext target=”_blank” }

Further resources

• Engineers Australia’s Code of Ethics provides guidance for the application of professional ethics as an engineer