Outline
This paper mainly deals with the concept of social research and its ethical and political considerations. It discusses about the precautions that should be taken to avoid unethical means as far as possible. This is followed by describing the political aspects focusing on the possible deviations in the procedure of the research due to the influence of personal and political beliefs of the researcher.
Social research is an important area of research that involves an attempt to investigate new facts, verify old facts and find out the causal relationship among the variables. This is usually done by social scientists. As the term indicates, this is essentially related to human beings in a society. While conducting social research, one should consider the related ethics and politics. Like any other area of operation, social research has its own ethics and politics. Ethics is associated with morality, which in turn, deals with right and wrong. At the same time, politics concerns the set of political beliefs behind the research.
Ethical aspects
There are many ethical considerations related to social research. Sometimes, while going through a social research process, the researcher may not consider the issues which may be apparently related to others. Social researches involve data collection. If the data to be collected are about the personal details of the respondents, problems of intrusion into the personal matters of the respondents may arise. This may, sometimes, be regarded as unethical. Even though the respondents are ready to reveal information, it will not benefit them. Social researchers insist upon voluntary participation from the respondents. This is one of the main advantages of this type of research over other fields of research. But, in some instances, voluntary participation becomes forced participation. This is a contradiction. As a part of the research, asking some questions to the respondents related to their deviant behavior, such as usage of alcohol and drugs is found to be hurting them psychologically. The ethics of social research prompts the researcher to keep the information drawn from the respondents anonymous. However, this is not possible always. If the data are being collected through interviews, the researcher may fail to keep the data anonymous, because the respondents will become identifiable in this process. Another ethical issue is regarding the identity of the researcher. Sometimes, the researcher has to conceal his identity as a researcher, but in some circumstances, it will not be appropriate. The best strategy to tackle this issue is to convey to the respondents that the research is being conducted as a part of the curriculum.
Political aspects
“The political issues of social research tend to centre on the substances and the use of the conducted research.” (Babbie, 81, para.2). Every social research has well-defined objectives and goals. Therefore, to achieve the desired goals, the researcher should utilize appropriate respondents. Also, the researcher should be very careful in determining the nature and number of respondents. Another political issue concerns the chance of misuse of the respondents. The researcher being an individual as well as being a citizen of a nation, should be having some political ideologies that he believes in. This may influence the entire research process. The researcher may adopt inappropriate methods to further his political ideologies. In this situation, what a researcher can do is to set aside his personal beliefs and political ideologies during the entire research process. There are some researches related to races in a particular country. The findings of the research may describe some of the races as being superior to the rest. This will invite comments from the public. In addition to this, the objectives of the research may be misinterpreted. In some instances, when the research is in connection with the census of a country, some sections of the population such as refugees, slaves, etc will not be included in the picture because of the fear that they may have to be given the status of a citizen. These are found to be some of the main political aspects regarding social researches.
Conclusion
Ethical and political issues are two important considerations while conducting social research. Often, ethics are very important to make research scientific. Sometimes, the research report may be conveying double meaning. Then, there will be a dilemma to determine which is acceptable and which is not. Because of this, a code of ethics is developed by the experts. However, it is very difficult to do research strictly confined within this framework. As far as political issues are concerned, a researcher should take care to avoid the influence of his personal and political views in the research process.
Works Cited
Babbie, Earl. The Basics of Social Research: The politics of social research. 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2007.