ABSTRACT
Historically, the issues around ethics and the politics of research have not
been as influential or as high on the research agenda as they are currently.
There have been many critiques within disciplines and across fields of
research about the morality of conducting research in specific contexts and
the approaches or way methodologies have been applied in specific topical
areas. There are also critiques about the purpose for many research projects,
why it is being done, to what end and who will benefit? In critical social
science, there is an emphasis and critique on only doing research that will
benefit the most disadvantaged groups in society and others critique the
imbalance of power and control between the researched and the researcher
in conventional research. To counter this, there is a need for ethics policy
and standard procedures to protect all parties. This chapter therefore
discusses what research ethics are, why they are important and the
concerns around valuing the knowledge that can be obtained through
research against the value of non-interference in the lives of potential
research participants.
