# 2.1 What are the most important ethical rules?

Ethical rules and principles are designed to ‘protect the dignity, rights and welfare of research participants’ (WHO, no date). While the details may vary slightly between different codes, the basic ethical principles remain the same. In the next activity, you will think about how these ethical principles can be applied to the research you will carry out in your project.

## Activity 2 Ethical principles on research projects

You should allow yourself 25 minutes to do this activity.

1. Watch the following video where Helen Kara outlines the basic principles of research ethics. Make notes on the key points she discusses in the video.

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Video 2 Why is research ethics so important?
Transcript
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### Comment

In the video, Helen Kara summarises the outcome of a worldwide research project, the Trust project. This identified that real research ethics involves research being carried out with respect, honesty, fairness and care. These four principles should be considered all the way through the project and beyond. However, different principles may be more important at some stages than at others. For example, it is important to design the research carefully. However, when working with other people, there is also a need for respect. Helen noted that today a lot of research is being carried out unethically, but prioritising the principles of respect, honesty, fairness and care will make sure your research is carried out in an ethical way.

2. Kara identified respect, honesty, fairness and care as being the overarching ethical principles. Consider the following ‘golden rules’ for carrying out policy research. For each golden rule, which of the main ethical principles apply? There may be more than one answer for each statement, as indicated next to each question below.

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OpenLearn - Carrying out research for policy and advocacy work
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