ABSTRACT
Public relations and marketing communications are concerned with intentional, often persuasive, communication whereby communicators and stakeholders are relationally active in creating, amending and re-constructing meanings and, thus, in transforming their social worlds. Most mass communication departments require students to have some education in the responsible gathering of research and ensuring its validity through curriculum courses, as well an Institutional Review Board, which is a college or university committee formed to ensure that research is conducted accurately and ethically on their campus. The duty of professionals engaged in research, measurement, and evaluation for public relations is to advance the highest ethical standards and ideals for research. All research should abide by the principles of intellectual honesty, fairness, dignity, disclosure, and respect for all stakeholders involved, namely clients (both external and internal), colleagues, research participants, the public relations profession, and the researchers themselves. Ethical research issues neglected by researchers span from important, but forgivable, to completely detrimental.
