¶ … 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...

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…