ABSTRACT
At first sight the links between the terms ‘ethical’ and ‘statistical’ are not self-evident and may appear at best tenuous. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines statistics as ‘Numerical facts systematically collected’ and statistic as the ‘science of collecting, classifying and using statistics’. In research, statistics commonly refers to the methods used to collect, classify and analyze quantitative data. The definition of ethics of course concerns morals-the ‘science of morals, treatise on this, moral principles, rules of conduct, whole field of moral science’. Despite the apparent lack of association between statistics and ethics, the phrase ‘rules of conduct’ is I think the key to their connection. In this chapter it is intended to explore the nature of some of the rules of conduct which, it can be argued, should govern the uses of statistical work with particular reference to educational research. It is not my purpose, however, to attempt to provide a definitive set of rules. Indeed, I hope that the discussion will demonstrate that the application of a set of absolute rules would be both impractical and undesirable.
