Speaker 1: Welcome to Ethical and Legal Issues in Market Research. My name is Adam Phillips and I'm going to take you through some of the issues that confront market researchers today in the area of ethics and the law. Market research relies on the goodwill of people who agree to answer our questions. We ask individuals to provide us with a lot of information about their behaviour and their attitudes. This is information they could reasonably regard as sensitive. We take for granted that profile questions like age, marital status and sex are standard questions that no one could object to, and yet they are intrusive questions that you might not ask in a social situation the first time you meet someone. The quality of research depends to a very large extent on our ability to contact representative samples of populations, to persuade them to provide us with their behavioural data and give honest answers to our questions. For that reason, researchers are careful to explain to participants at the start of an interview how their data will be used. This reassures them that it will be kept secure and explains that they will not be identified to the end users of the research without their consent. The secret for getting good quality responses lies in promoting the reputation of research and demonstrating professional behaviour to participants, clients and the media. This is easy to say, but it requires continual attention by everyone working in the research sector if we are to be believed. The bad publicity associated with a lack of transparency in collecting and handling personal data by research and social media companies and the bad publicity associated with the recent problems with political polling predictions highlights the challenge of maintaining a good reputation. Maintaining the reputation of research becomes more difficult every day with the growth of social media and the development of 24-7 media coverage. Every researcher needs to be aware at all times that their behaviour can influence public confidence in our work. The key to producing good quality research is to build trust with individual research participants and clients by demonstrating good behaviour. Years ago, it was sufficient to tell participants that their information would be used to develop better products and services and to reassure them that the results would be presented in such a way that they could not be identified. This is no longer enough. The growth of the Internet has created public discussion about targeting online content at individuals. The Internet has made people much more concerned about how their personal data will be used. Participants expect to understand whether the answers they give will be used to help them get better value from the products and services they use or whether their answers will be used to help the manufacturer or service provider extract more profit from them. A few factors can make it more difficult to build trust with participants. For example, offering financial incentives in online research to facilitate cooperation can make the relationship transactional rather than personal. Also, the lower cost of online interviews in comparison with face-to-face and telephone interviews exacerbates the problem by eliminating the human interviewer. Without a personal relationship with an interviewer, it is much more difficult for the researcher to build a trusting relationship with a research participant. The general principles for building trust and confidence in research are obvious. Be honest, do what you say you are going to do, avoid causing harm and manage conflicts of interest to ensure a fair relationship between you and the individual research participant. These four statements are ethical principles. They are not rules because the behaviours needed to satisfy these requirements depend on the particular situation. These statements cannot be easily converted into specific rules that apply to every scenario. The difference between principles and rules is an important distinction for you to understand. We will return to it later in this course since laws in their practical application tend to operate more like rules than principles and rules are easier to find a way to avoid than principles. I have explained that following ethical principles is essential to maintaining the reputation of research and the trust of clients and participants. If we earn that trust, we will get better samples, more honest answers, better quality data and insights and evidence in which our clients, the media and the public will have confidence. Good behaviour not only reassures participants and their communities, it also reassures legislators and regulators. Market researchers have been able to obtain some exemptions from data privacy laws and regulations that would make it a lot more difficult to carry out our work. Failing to observe good ethical practices and the self-regulatory codes of market research associations could seriously endanger these exemptions in the law in future. That is why it is essential that market researchers understand how to apply ethics in their work. In this course you will learn about ethical practices in research and about the steps you need to take to avoid causing harm to participants. You will learn about personal data and how to protect the individual who provided it, whether the data is collected by direct questioning or by passive methods. You will learn about Privacy by Design. Privacy by Design is a toolkit for helping organisations and individuals test their market research processes and project designs. This is done to make sure that any risks to participating individuals' privacy and any risks of causing harm are kept to a minimum. You will also learn about the international principles that apply to protecting personal data. You will master how these principles are converted into law and built into everyday research practice through self-regulation based on industry codes and guidelines. Finally, the course will introduce you to the leading national and international industry associations and expose you to examples of their ethical codes and guidelines. It will identify international cultural differences and legal requirements that global researchers need to take into account. It will briefly touch on the legal issues involved in transferring and accessing personal data around the world. It will cover the international standards that have been developed to help ensure consistent research processes and minimum quality standards when working globally. These have been introduced by the industry working with ISO, the International Standards Organisation. I hope you enjoy the course.