HOW TO REVIEW THE LITERATURE AND CONDUCT ETHICAL STUDIESThe issue of limits is common in contract
research, as when a firm or government agency asks
for work on a particular research project. A trade-off
may develop between quality and cost in contract
research. Abt (1979), the president of a major pri-
vate social research firm, Abt Associates, argued that
it is difficult to receive a contract by bidding what
the research actually costs. Once the research begins,
we may need to redesign the project, to lower costs.
The contract procedure makes midstream changes
difficult. We may find that we are forced by the con-
tract to use research procedures that are less than
ideal. We then confront a dilemma: Complete the
contract and do low-quality research or fail to fulfill
the contract and lose money and future jobs.
You should refuse to continue work on a study
if you cannot uphold generally accepted standards
of research. If a sponsor wants biased samples or
leading questions, to be ethical, you must refuse to
cooperate. If legitimate research shows the spon-
sor’s pet idea or project to be a bad course of action,
you may even anticipate the end of employment or
pressure to violate professional research standards.
In the long run, you, the sponsor, the scientific com-
munity, and the larger society would be harmed by
the violation of sound research practice. You must
decide whether you are a “hired hand” who will give
the sponsors whatever they want, even if it is ethi-
cally wrong, or a professional who is obligated to
teach, guide, or even oppose sponsors in the service
of higher moral principles.
We should ask why sponsors would want the
social research conducted if they are not interested
in using the findings or in the truth. The answer is
that such sponsors do not view social research as a
means to knowledge or truth. They see it only as a
cover they can use to legitimate a decision or prac-
tice that they could not otherwise do easily. These
sponsors are abusing the researcher’s status as being
a serious trustworthy professional by being deceit-
ful and trying to “cash in” on the reputation of the
scientific researchers’ honesty and integrity. When
this occurs, the ethical course of action is to expose
and end the abuse.Suppressing Findings.What happens if you con-
duct research and the findings make the sponsor
look bad or the sponsor refuses to release the
results? This is not an uncommon situation. For
example, a sociologist conducted a study for the
Wisconsin Lottery Commission on the effects of
state government-sponsored gambling. After she
completed the report but before it was released to
the public, the commission asked her to remove
sections that outlined many negative social effects
of gambling and to eliminate her recommendations
to create social services to help compulsive gamblers.
The researcher was in a difficult position. Which
ethical value took precedence: covering up for the
sponsor that had paid for the research or revealing
the truth for all to see but then suffering the conse-
quences?^32 A Roman Catholic priest who surveyed
American bishops on their dissatisfaction with offi-
cial church policy was ordered by his superiors to
suppress findings and destroy the questionnaires.
Instead, he resigned after 24 years in the priesthood
and made his results public.^33 Researchers pay high
personal and economic costs for being ethical.
Government agencies may suppress scientific
information that contradicts official policy or
embarrasses high officials. Retaliation against
social researchers employed by government agen-
cies who make the information public also occurs.
For example, a social researcher employed by the
U.S. Census Bureau who studied deaths caused by
the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq reported that gov-
ernment officials suppressed findings for political
reasons. The researcher, whom the agency attempted
to fire, reported that findings of high death rates had
been delayed and underestimated by the U.S. gov-
ernment agency that provided statistics. Before
information could be released, it had to go through
an office headed by a political appointee. The
researcher charged that the political appointee was
most interested in protecting the administration’s
foreign policy. In another example, the U.S. Defense
Department ordered the destruction of studies thatContract research A type of applied research that
is sponsored (paid for) by a government agency, foun-
dation, company, and so on; the researcher agrees to
conduct a study on the sponsor’s research question
and finish the study by a set deadline for a fixed price.