How serious are ethical issues in educational research?
Our discussion may well have given the impression that the activity of doing research is riven with agonising ethical dilemmas. It is certainly true that any research project involves many potential ethical issues. However, these are by no means always very serious matters about which researchers need to deliberate. Our view is that there is often a tendency to over-dramatise the seriousness of the ethical problems involved in social and educational research. Much of the time this research has relatively little significance for the people being studied, compared with all the other things going on in their lives. Indeed, it seems to us that, in ethical terms, social and educational research is not much different from many ordinary activities that we all engage in every day. There is always scope for identifying ethical issues that might need consideration. Much of the time these will have to be put on one side in order to get anything done, but some of them will be of such importance th
