Research Method
5.5 Research ethics
Ethics approval was granted by the Massey University Human Ethics Committee (Approval #: MUHEC 03/074).
Ethical issues that could become potential problems included the possibility that one might feel enticement to engage in PWU, issues of anonymity and confidentiality, and the use of incentives for participants to complete the survey.
5.5.1 Enticement to engage in PWU
In the context of the research project, personal web use at work, the sending of invitation emails mainly to business email addresses could potentially be construed as enticement to engage in an undesired behaviour. However, this is not necessarily the case. Firstly the invitation email contained only a web link to the extensive survey and not the survey itself. Employees receive dozens of unsolicited emails at their work email address and have the choice of opening it, reading it, responding to it, forwarding, or deleting the said email: all of these are activities that are generally acceptable to organisations. Furthermore, a number of employees read their email from their home computer rather than a work computer, while others have firewalls and security systems that control the email messages the employee actually receives. In light of the common nature of emails and the diverse options of responding, it is therefore not seen as problematic that a number of potential participants were approached via email addresses at their work.
At the same time, completion of the online questionnaire was not in any way limited to or encouraged to be done from workplace computers. Nevertheless, it appeared that for nearly two thirds of participants, completion of the survey at the workplace was not
perceived to be a problem (68.1% reported to have done so). Those individuals, in turn, who were aware of policies, procedures and controls that restrict personal web use at their workplace had the opportunity to forward the survey link to their home email address, and then complete the survey away from their workplace. Almost one third of participants
Research method
(29.5%) may have chosen to do so, and reported that they completed the questionnaire on a non-work computer.
5.5.2 Anonymity and confidentiality
Measures were taken to ensure anonymity of the participant for the researcher and confidentiality of the information supplied. At the same time it is acknowledged that the preservation of anonymity may not have been necessarily guaranteed from the side of the participants’ employers. The possibility of workplaces identifying employees through monitoring emails and website access could potentially bring employer retribution for engaging in PWU. However, because the invitation emails were sent to work email addresses, electronic monitoring programs scanning for PWU would not have identified it as personal email. And although some electronic monitoring programs ‘read’ each in- and outgoing email, these programs tend to scan for any objectionable material, that could be seen as sabotage to the organisation. Only in special circumstances would an organisation order their IT department to scan and read every email sent and received by an individual, thus breaching the anonymity of the participant.
For those people who may have been unaware of such controls or restrictions, and whose participation in the survey may have resulted in a reprimand from their supervisor or employer, it was possible to contact the researcher, and advise her of this so that she could, in turn, have contacted the employer, explained the situation, and apologized for any inconvenience caused. No such request or comment had been
made to the researcher in any form, either in the pilot studies or during the ten-week data gathering process. Confidentiality of the information gathered via the web-based survey was guaranteed, because even if organisation-based electronic monitoring procedures had identified the person accessing the survey website, the monitoring program would not have been able to access the data base with the participants’ answers.
The perceived anonymity of the Internet can be argued to be technically only an illusion. With the potential presence of electronic monitoring systems on work stations, participants can remain anonymous to the researcher, but potentially not to the employer. It is acknowledged that in the present study, for example, there was no control over potential invasions of the participants’ anonymity through electronic monitoring systems, ‘spyware’ or similar processes. However, from the researchers and the Webmaster’s side every effort was made to ensure that identifying personal details (such as email addresses) were kept separate from the participant responses, and to destroy them immediately after their administrative use, thus reducing the possibility of breaching the anonymity of participants.
Research method
5.5.3 The use of incentives
In order to encourage survey participation and to acknowledge the effort and time spent by respondents (pilot testing suggested 30 minutes), a raffle of incentives was included. Each participant supplying his or her email address had an equal chance (1:30) to be the recipient of an incentive. The raffle prizes ranged from mini digital cameras,
walkmans and picnic backpacks to shower radios and knife sets. All ten prizes were then mailed out to randomly selected participants within one week after receipt of their mailing address. Subsequently all email addresses and physical mailing addresses were
destroyed. Again, anonymity towards the researcher was maintained, because at no time did I have access to any technically possible links between response data and individual- identifying information.
This practice of a prize pool as incentive and token of appreciation is common among consumer surveys conducted via the Internet (e.g. AC Nielsen, Consumer Link, Nestle) in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, and in line with the this study’s limited budget. Other incentives frequently used by researchers to gather data, such as paying every participant a set fee, or allowing course credits for participation were either not within the financial budget of the researcher, or not appropriate for the current research (considering the international target population that excluded tertiary students, for
example).
The above described measures, statistical and qualitative data analysis procedures were then applied, and the results are presented in the following three chapters.
Participants’ PWU patterns