Speaker 1: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Flight. Nice to be touching base with you. This is a very short video and the content deals with ethics in research. So here's the challenge. We are asked to, if you've seen other videos, we are asked to be a conduit or a link between the data that is out there and the researcher or the decision maker who's making a decision. So think about it as the researcher is sort of this barrier or this bridge between the data that's out there and the decision maker. And part of our ethical responsibility is to protect the data, protect the respondents who give us data and act as an intermediary between that population and those who are making decisions based on that population. And so there are all kinds of issues here that we're going to talk about that are associated with maintaining anonymity and protecting the source of information so that that source of information is willing to give information, give it truly and freely and not fear that their information is going to be misused. And that's the researcher's responsibility. So as we kind of just think about that in the background and we'll talk a little bit about kind of the role here that we put in and what could contribute to making an unethical decision. One would be if you receive undue pressure from your client to presume a conclusion. So for instance, if a client comes to you and they want to launch a new product and they want to do some research that will generate demand forecasting for that new product. And if the results are such that they don't really look like that product is going to do so well, you know, the client may be inclined to ignore those results or they might be inclined to enhance those results so they look more positive than they actually are. So, you know, the job here is not for you to confirm or prove what the client thinks. It's to gather data objectively, analyze that data objectively and provide, you know, that insight to the client. So providing unsupported insights or conclusions may be something that you're pressured to do, but obviously, you know, if the data doesn't say it, then, you know, you don't have a position to say that either. So don't overstate or avoid the temptation to overstate results. If the results don't come out in a manner in which your client wants, that's the way it is. Another thing clients might do is provide insufficient funding or budgeting. They might ask you to cut corners in your research process. And this is one of these things where from an ethical perspective, if a client comes to you and you know that they're under budget, you have to be upfront and honest and tell them, look, we can only do X and Y. You want us to do X, Y, Z, but your budget doesn't support doing those things. We can only do some of those things. And so we'll have to adjust the research process to just do what we can do with what you can afford, basically, but we're not going to overdo that. And so being honest and upfront, that's kind of like an ethical thing when you're dealing with a client specifically. So there's this client side type thing. But then again, on the, you know, where you're getting your data from, that's data supply or information supply side, protecting the source, protecting the source of information. So when you go, for instance, and do a survey and people are responding, we can't disclose who those people are. We can't disclose personal identifiers that could link data with a respondent, typically. Sometimes we do in the effort to follow up, but we have to disclose that. We have to let the respondent know that we're recording this information. Another case might be if we're doing a focus group and you've got the focus group there, you have a bunch of individuals in the focus group. The client's very often watching that focus group happen, but we still need to be careful about disclosing confidential information and things like that. Another issue when we deal with this is simply protecting data. We've heard every day about a thing called data breach, where we have a data set and somebody hacks our system and a person who hacks our system then has access to data. That's another case where if we have personal information, personal identifiers of our subjects tied to the data, then if our data is hacked, the hackers have access to personal identifiers. So there's a set of steps that we can take where we disaggregate the data and separate that information, but it does have to be taken and it's something that we need to be careful about. Last item on this page, the two phrases which you might find funny, one called SUGGING, the other called FRUGGING. So if we call somebody up and say, hey, I'd like for you to do a survey, I'm collecting data, would you be willing to do a survey? That's fine. No problem to do that. When we do that and then in the same process turn it into a sales call where I'm trying to sell them a product, so selling under the guise of research, that's SUGGING. So SUGGING, selling under the guise of research. That's really wrong. You're not supposed to do that. In fact, there are telemarketing laws that prohibit people from calling, like cold calling. You can be put on a do not call list if you're a salesperson. That law does not apply to researchers. If you're conducting research, you can call people who are on a quote unquote do not call list. National do not call list applies to sales. It does not apply to research. So if you start to slip in sales as a result of or in the process of doing a research call, that's a big no-no. You don't want to do that. The other one, FRUGGING, is fundraising under the guise of doing research. Fundraising. So it's the same idea. I call you up and I ask you, hey, would you like to do a survey? Oh, great, yeah, oh, would you mind, do you want to donate also some money to this fundraising effort that we're doing? Again, that's not something that you should do. It's not something that's allowed to be done. And we see it from time to time, but it's unethical. It's not something that we want to do. Beyond that, the American Marketing Association has what they call a code of ethics for researchers. One will abide by local laws. Two will behave ethically. So we're law-abiding, ethical folks. We have certain protected subjects. So there's a group of people called protected subjects. They include children. They include people who are hospitalized in certain cases. They include anybody who may be in a diminished capacity. And they may include, which also may include elderly or older folks. Not necessarily, but if they have a diminished mental capacity or are a vulnerable population, then we have to be extremely careful. And children, generally speaking, we just have to take super care to process their data and their information through guardians and parents. We have to be careful to walk that process the right way. We can't force respondents to give information. Research needs to be done from a voluntary perspective. We certainly want to observe the privacy rights of individuals. So in other words, we don't have to be confidential or anonymous. But if we say we are, then we have to. So we have to disclose when we're not. That's the best way to do it. Disclose, disclose, disclose. Let the respondents know everything up front and do exactly what you say you're going to do. Never allow personal data to be used for any other purpose. So in other words, we're not going to gather personal data and then sell it. That from a research perspective is unethical. I know lots of companies do that, but that's not what we do from a research perspective. Again, make sure that our process is clearly stated, that we're not doing things that we're not supposed to be doing, and that our process is transparent for people to see. And then also, you know, we have sort of this review that we do a lot of times, a follow-up with our individuals, our participants, in the sense that they know what the research requirement is for them, and they know when they've completed it. That's generally the process that works there. Okay, so again, this is from the American Marketing Association Code of Ethics. You know, ethics and kind of doing research right yields, number one, better results. It also creates a better functional atmosphere with clients. In the end of the day, you'll make more money, as opposed to cutting corners and things like that, and your work will be better. So anyways, that's it. That's all we're going to talk about with this little segment. I hope you have a great day. Let me know if you have any questions.