Ethical standards in mail and email surveys: confidentiality and voluntary participation

¶ … mail or email surveys received recently and addresses where proper ethical steps were followed. This work further describes the highest ethical standards in the use of surveys.

The writer of this work has received email surveys recently that ask for participation in providing opinions of products or services. The emails did not follow the proper ethical standards that are required when completing surveys.

Ethical Standards

Surveys are reported to be representative of the "most common types of quantitative, social science research." (Writing at CSU, nd) In survey research, a sample of respondents is selected from a population and the research following this selection, "administers a standardized questionnaire to them. The questionnaire or survey may be a written document that the individual being surveyed completed. There are ethical issues that are required to be addressed when using surveys. The work of Eleanor Singer reports that when survey research is used the most serious risk of harm "to which participants are subject is a breach of confidentiality and the consequences that may flow from such a breach…" (nd, p.1)

II. Informed Consent

Singer additionally reports that the individual participating in a survey should be required to provide 'informed consent' or the "knowing consent of an individual or his legally authorized representative…without undue inducement or any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, or any other form of constraint or coercion." (Singer, nd, p.2)

II. Other Issues

Other issues that must be addressed when asking someone to participate in a survey is the issue of privacy, which involves the "right to determine when, and under what conditions to reveal information about oneself to others." (Singer, nd, p.2) Ethics in online research using surveys requires that researchers disclose "fully to those who sponsor surveys the limitations and shortcomings of the survey and to avoid use of methods that deliberately introduce bias into the results." (Qualitrics, 2009, p.1) Therefore, the survey report should be inclusive of information "On who sponsored it, who conducted it, exact wording, and sequencing of questions, description of the population and how a sample was selected, sample sizes, and sampling tolerance, and the method place and dates of data collection." (Qualitrics, 2009, p.1) Although most academic and private sector organizations are noted to adhere to the codes of ethics and practices that the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) has established, the fact is that "This information is seldom available in published research reports or media summaries, but should be obtainable with a phone call or letter to the sponsor of the survey. Today, online survey software has made this process of gathering the ethical information extremely easy. With a good survey software program, one can provide the relevant information and adhere to the code of ethics and practices with ease." (Qualitrics, 2009, p.1)