Chapter 3. Methodological Approach
3.5 Ethical considerations
The use of surveys in this thesis in order to investigate the hypothesised effects indicates that human intervention was vital for the successful completion of this
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research. When it comes to human intervention and ethical considerations Schlenker and Forsyth (1977) argue that three philosophical approaches and schools of thoughts relate to ethics: a) teleology, which involves the balancing of the costs and benefits associated with an action as a means of developing general ethical rules, b) deontology, which involves the rational adherence to rigid, universal rules that hold irrespective of the situation or consequences and c) scepticism, which involves denying the ability to apply universal rules and asserting the individuality of moral codes.
The philosophical stance of the researcher regarding research ethics is in line with the deontological approach for the reason that she considers that participants should not be harmed in any way no matter what the potential research benefit may be (Skinner et al., 1988). The participants in this research were treated as “ends and never purely as means”. Every practice that has been undertaken in terms of collecting, analysing and presenting information from individuals was based on ethical principles that ensured that the process did not harm or put the participants at risk (Beauchamp and Bowie, 2004). Given that this thesis is embedded in more general social and psychological research, the researcher has carefully considered the ethical code and principles of the British Sociological Association and Psychological Society related to anonymity, confidentiality and autonomy (BSA, 2004; BPS, 2010).
Anonymity requires that even the researcher does not know who the participants are (Polonsky, 1998). In other words, it means that the researcher does not name the
individual involved but it is usually extended to mean that the researcher does not include information about any individual that will enable that individual to be identified by others (Walford, 2005). Confidentiality, on the other hand, means that the researcher may know who the participants are but they will not be identified in any way in the resulting report (Polonsky, 1998). Confidential information is information that is private or secret and should not be passed on to others (Walford, 2005; Wiles et al., 2008).
Therefore, in this thesis the researcher has regard to her obligations under the Data Protection Acts and Freedom of Information Act, where a) threats to the confidentiality and anonymity of research data have been anticipated by the researcher by keeping the records of those participating in the research confidential and b) methods for preserving anonymity, such as the removal of identifiers or the use of pseudonyms, have been used in order to break the link between data and identifiable individuals (BSA, 2004).
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Finally, autonomy means that participants have the opportunity to participate
voluntarily and have the opportunity to withdraw from the study at any point (Polonsky, 1998; Punch, 2013). The researcher a) respected the knowledge, insight, experience, expertise, individual-cultural-role differences (age, sex, disability, education, ethnicity, gender, language, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, marital or family situation and socio-economic status) of the participants, b) was willing to explain the nature of the research to which participants were being asked to contribute, and to avoid any unfair, prejudiced or discriminatory practice and c) was keen to accept that individuals may choose not to be involved in the research (BPS, 2010).
In order to ensure the above, the introduction part in the questionnaires used in this thesis offered a clear statement with detailed information regarding the aspects related to anonymity, confidentiality and autonomy (please see introductory statement in Appendix A, B and C). Participants were informed from the beginning of the survey about the aim/objectives of the research, the type of data to be collected, the method of collecting data, the confidentiality and anonymity conditions, the time commitment expected from participants, the right to decline to offer any particular information requested by the researcher, the opportunity to withdraw from the study at any time, the name and contact details of the investigator (BPS, 2010).
3.6 Chapter summary
This chapter has highlighted the main methodological approaches of this thesis and provided clear justifications regarding the main reasons that explain the methodological decisions of the researcher related to the empirical studies. Particularly, the empirical studies are a) influenced by the researcher’s positivist philosophical approach, b) based on a deductive approach where quantitative research methods are implemented, c) related to data collected through cross-section surveys that use online questionnaires that are constructed by adopting validated scales from previous research and distributed to a random sample of English and Greek individuals and d) linked to results from moderated and mediated regression analyses by using SPSS software, Hayes syntax and Preacher’s online slope analysis. The following chapter will reflect on the initial
empirical study, which relates to the investigation of the moderating role of the financial crisis on the relationship between capital/motives and investment intentions. The
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hypothesised effects are examined in a turbulent economic situation such as the one that Greece has been facing for the past seven years.
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