Ethical Considerations

The second major concern that needs to be addressed before designing a study and after reviewing the literature is about ethics. Ethics defines what moral research procedure should be involved. There is a statement on what is proper and improper behaviour to guide professional organisations and research practice in an ethical way according to a code of ethics. The ethical checks should be taken care of as soon as the study is designed. One important note about ethical conduct is that even if the research subjects were unaware or unconcerned about ethics, researchers need to prepare themselves and consider ethical concerns. There should be a balance between advancing knowledge against the value of non-interference in the lives of others. Since the two main methods of data collection in this research are survey and user observation, ethical considerations are discussed here (Newman & Benz 1998).

Survey research is the most widely used social research technique. In survey research, invasion of privacy is the major ethical issue. In order to not intrude into respondents’ privacy, the following notes should be considered:

1- Respondents should not be asked for intimate actions, personal beliefs, and personal information

2- Respondents should be treated with dignity and minimising discomfort

3- The responsibility for protecting the confidentiality of data belongs to the researcher

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4- The participation of respondents should be voluntary: a consent form needs to be given to respondents and they are allowed to withdraw from the study at any time

5- The survey should not be used as a pseudo-survey: an attempt to persuade someone to do something, with little or no real interest in learning from respondents.

6- The survey must not be poorly designed or purposely rigged: a limited survey must not be performed in terms of answers the respondents can choose. The results must not be misused.

(Newman & Benz 1998).

As mentioned above, the other technique that was used in this research is observation. As it is similar to field research, the ethics considerations for field research were amended to be used for my research. In essence, the concerns that are raised in field research are more significant than simple observation (lab testing) (Redmond-Pyle & Moore 1995). The difference is that instead of observing participants in their own workspace and realistic situation, the research objects are brought to a prepared environment or a lab for observation. This simplifies some of the concerns that are related to field research. The considerations for observation are amended as follows (Newman & Benz 1998):

1- Deception. There are two kinds of field research: covert and overt. The choice between them and justification of covert research is in the hand of the thoughtful and knowledgeable researcher. Covert research is never easier or preferable to overt research.

2- Confidentiality. The intimate knowledge, personal information, and beliefs, that the participants provide, should be kept confidential. This includes disguising participants’ name in the notes and data publications.

3- Involvement with deviants. Researchers who conduct observation on people should be careful about who is being observed. The people who are being observed must not engage in illegal, immoral or unethical activity or behaviour, which may cause further dilemmas for researchers.

4- The powerful. For prevention of bias, the powerful, and less powerful - street people, the poor, children, and lower-level workers - all need to be involved or at least free to be involved in the research. However, immersion of researchers in the world of less powerful people, which expresses a rarely heard perspective, may raise the issue of bias.

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5- Publishing reports. There is a balance between the right to know and the right to privacy. The researcher must be careful about publishing anything that might offend or harm someone. Instead, what has been learned stays hidden, the report may just be limited, and the confidential data must be omitted.

Therefore, the use and misuse of knowledge and its truthfulness depend on researchers (Newman & Benz 1998), who ultimately need to conduct research in an ethical and moral manner, by considering what is or is not legitimate to do. Each study chapter contains a section specifically for ethical concerns. The required ethics checklist and further considerations are discussed in those sections respectively.

5.9 Summary

At the beginning of this chapter, an overview of design research and the DRM were given, including: 1) the relationship between design, design research, and the DRM, 2) the DRM Framework, and 3) different design research approaches based on choosing different types of study for the stages in the DRM framework. It was explained that type 3 design research (as shown in Table 5-1) is the closest fit to this research (addressing objective 1).

Use of a design process to conduct part of the studies was justified based on the DRM (addressing objective 2). Afterwards, the research questions were presented (addressing objective 3). Next, research approaches (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed) were discussed (addressing objective 4). It was also stated that quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research approaches were all needed to address the five research questions (addressing objective 5). The details of the application of each method for each study will be explained in later chapters. The ethical considerations for the two main methods of data collection (surveys and user observation) were explained (addressing objective 6).

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