1. Good research needs to be sensitive to how paradigms color perspective, frame research, lead values to influence what we take to befact, and lead us to produce less than perfect truth.
2. We therefore need to be sensitive to how in research it is unavoidable that values will affect facts. Values are subjective preferences often implying what is right or wrong. Facts are objective information about the world. We probably never get to know facts in their pure form. Personal values as well as paradigm values lead us to consciously as well as unconsciously construct a partial view of the world.
3. Value concerns about what is right or wrong also arise when we consider research ethics. Research ethics are based on the same ideas as all other ethics. Ethics concern our relationships with others in the world--other people, other animals, the environment, etc. Research involves intervening in others’ lives.
4. As with other parts of life, we need to ask basic questions such as why are we doing any particular activity, is it worth the price of affecting others in certain ways, do we need their permission or consent , should we provide full disclosure ahead of time about what we are trying to do, to what extent should we guarantee research subjects anonymity or confidentiality.
5. Anonymity is where they remain unknown to the researcher.
6. Confidentiality is where the researcher knows who they are but will not disclose that to anyone else.
7. Sometimes research is done without consent--is that ever correct? Often research is done without full disclosure on the grounds that if subjects knew why they were being studied they would withhold information, behave differently and generally prevent researchers from finding out what they were trying to study.
8. Social work researchers also need to consult the National Association of Social Workers' Code of Ethics, especially about the profession’s commitment to empowering clients. We need to ask whether our research helps empower clients to be able to better act on their own behalf or whether that research only manipulates and exploits them for information.
9. Values affect research in other ways starting with how we frame a research problem. We need to be sensitive to how biases in our perspective of a problem affect how we develop a research focus, phrase a research question. There is a debate about whether either science or scientists, research or researchers, can be neutral.
10. Biases regarding gender, race, ethnicity, etc. , can raise important ethical issues, especially regarding who should be able to study whom, how, where, under what conditions, to what effect.
11. While remaining sensitive to the issue of bias, we often develop a research question by placing ourselves in a research community , finding out how others have studied the topic, how they have framed their research, what methods they have used, and how our research can build on and add to what has already been done. Using library search tools can us find the studies we need to consult.
12. A good research question is one that is researchable or, in other words, is a question that can be answered with empirical information. While we need to be wary of value bias, we need to focus on trying to acquiring factual information whether it is qualitative or quantitative. Research is all about acquiring sound empirical information about the world as it is.
13. A good research strives to achieve controlled observation . Controlled observation is where we establish conditions such that we can isolate how certain selected factors affect other factors. If we are using a causal perspective as is often the case when doing quantitative research, then controlled observation is focused on trying to establish conditions where we can isolate a causal factor's effect on some other factor--such as length of unemployment on self-esteem. Good controlled observation would allow us to isolate a causal factor’s affect while controlling for all other factors that might affect what we are studying--e.g., what is the effect of length of unemployment on self-esteem controlling for other factors that might affect self-esteem, such as family history, relationships with others’, income, gender, age, etc.
14. When trying to acquire quantitative empirical information, research is often framed in terms of an hypothesis. An hypothesis is a statement about what is likely to be true. It is like a bet or a wager. It is a predictive statement. Hypotheses are often stated in a way that suggests that one factor tends to be related to another as in the example--the longer someone is unemployed, the lower their personal self-esteem. Hypotheses often are stated in a way that specifies an independent factor (such as length of unemployment) and a dependent factor (self-esteem), where the independent factor (length of unemployment) is specified to affect the dependent factor (self-esteem). If data collected for instance show that levels of self-esteem vary with length of employment even after taking other factors into account, then we might want to suggest that the independent factor (such as length of unemployment) tends to affect the dependent factor (self-esteem).