Advanced Research Skills and Research Ethics
Full course description
The research of most students involves empirical research with human subjects. As this is highly challenging from an ethical perspective, we will pay attention to this more extensively. Legal regulations, ethical codes of research organizations, faculties or universities are important (and strict) guidelines that describe the duties of researchers and therefore are helpful in many cases.
However, in all research projects there will be moments at which ethical principles conflict or at which it is a challenge to strictly conform to the rules of the ethical research codes. In addition, the reproducibility crisis in science and practices like HARKing and p-hacking require that students are aware of the importance of scientific integrity, and of how the research community is responding to these challenges.
The final assessment for this course is a numerical grade between 0,0 and 10,0.
Course objectives
- Students know the central ethical principles underlying responsible conduct of research, particularly when human subjects are involved
- Students are able to evaluate research (plans) by means of the ethical principles
- Students are able to detect and reflect on ethical dilemmas in empirical research
- Students are able to work relatively autonomously from their supervisor and are able to stand up for themselves in a respectful (and effective) manner
- Students have the disposition to follow the ethical principles in their own research