Why Do Ethics Matter

Even though codes of ethics are written down, they are not known as rules, but it is given to set the boundaries of what is and is not an acceptable way to conduct research

To ensure that a researcher’s enthusiasm for knowledge and understanding doesn’t let them get carried away, clear guidelines for ethical behaviour in research, a Code of Ethics, have been established by governments, institutions and various professional societies such as the American Psychological Association(APA), the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI).

Plagiarism cases can provide insight on the dire consequences that can occur if a student is caught copying within an academic setting. The professors accused Amanda Serpico, a former student of Rutgers University, of plagiarizing on her opinion paper in her argumentation class (Bailey, 2011). Amanda obtained partial credit for using citations in a majority of the writing and providing the sources in the reference section, but she did not properly cite at least three verbatim passages that she used within her work (Bailey, 2011). Amanda utilized Turnitin software to review her document and to detect plagiarism before turning in the paper for grading, but the plagiarism accusation still resulted in her receiving a failing grade on the assignment and in the course and denied admission to several graduate schools. (Bailey, 2011).

Good scholarship practice can be referred to as a formal study which involves academic learning and achievement. It involves acknowledging where information used to support ideas in a particular context is gotten and citing the sources (Locke and Latham, 2009). Britag and Mahmud (2009) pointed out that different strategies which include the use of electronic software tools such as turnitin have been derived for detecting plagiarism with the intent of allowing students’ take responsibility of their learning and also work hand in hand with their tutors in the drafting stages of their assignments. According to Britag and Mahmud (2009) manual detection of plagiarism is difficult because it is time consuming and this is the reason why some tutors are reluctant in pursuing potential cases of plagiarism. However both the manual method of plagiarism detection and the electronic text matching method should be employed (Britag and Mahmud, 2009). Scaife (2007) argued that the electronic text matching software is not the solution to eliminating plagiarism because the software only focuses on text matching of paper under review with documents (journals, articles, e-books and conference papers) found on the internet or which has been previously submitted and this is a limitation because the only detection are focused on electronic materials without considering some non-electronic paper based documents which could still be plagiarised.

Over the centuries, teachers and professors all have had a problem with academic dishonesty. The advancement in technology has made plagiarizing so much easier, and because of this, many professors have resorted to using software programs which detects any sort of plagiarism. One popular program many professors are enforcing their students to use is Turnitin.com. When a paper is submitted into Turnitin, the program compares it to previous submitted essays saved in its database and the content available on the internet. However, in recent years, there has been much controversy between the ethics of Turnitin and student’s rights.

When conducting any type of psychological research, the American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics codes comes into effect. Every researcher or scientist is obligated to follow the standards set in the ethics codes. There are many ethical standards that need to be upheld when dealing with research. Researchers must see if the research or study meets the ethical standards. There are many ways of conducting research and gathering data. Some ways are considered ethical and appropriate ways to gather data while other ways are deemed unethical. Deception and misrepresenting oneself in order to obtain data is a controversial issue on

Plagiarism is a concern for academic honesty and personal integrity. When I was an undergrad in the late 1980’s, repositories of papers were kept in an academic department to aid in plagiarism detection. Plagiarism was evaluated by a Professor recognizing particular work and being forced to ask a student for validity of original thought. Today there are tools students can use to avoid plagiarism (Turn It In, 2014). For this course we will submit our writings to an internet site called Turn It In to avoid plagiarism.

Plagiarism, risk assessment, informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, data handling and reporting, mistakes and negligence, working with a mentor, and Northcentral University requirements for Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval are all imperative parts of the dissertation process that require careful attention to avoid any unethical practices that could occur, whether intentional or unintentional. Plagiarism is the act of taking previously written work and using it as an original piece of writing (Ison, 2014). Risk assessment, informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, data handling and reporting, as well as mistakes and negligence are all ethical issues found in the process of conducting research.

Plagiarism is the action of stealing and copying whole information from another author and I have used a plagiarism checker to prevent this from happening when presenting my work with the use of internet research. This has developed my ethical capability as one of the topics in ethical understudying is recognising and exploring. I have recognised the ethics behind it and researched why it is important.

Plagiarism is an increasing large issue on college campuses, a habit to most of the student. According to the article ‘’The Plagiarism Plague’’, the findings on the survey made to 50,000 students on more than 60 campuses was that 70 percent of the students admitted that they cheated. Half of the students surveyed admitted that one or more times made serious cheating on writing assignments, with 77 percent of the students surveyed said that cheating was not a serious issue.

Ethical principles that support all research include: Protection of individuals, Ensuring that individuals only participate voluntarily, Ensuring that any personal information relating to the research is treated confidentially, Agreement that the plan for any research project is subject to independent scrutiny by experts.

There are three basic ethical principles that researchers should adhere while conducting research. The three

Ethics are the norms or standards for conduct that distinguish between right and wrong. They help to determine the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. Why are ethical considerations so important in research? First, ethical standards prevent against the fabrication or falsifying of data and therefore, promote the pursuit of knowledge and truth which is the primary goal of research. Ethical behavior is also critical for collaborative work because it encourages an environment of trust, accountability, and mutual respect among researchers. This is especially important when considering issues related to data sharing, co-authorship, copyright guidelines, confidentiality, and many other issues. Researchers must also adhere to ethical standards in order for the public to support and believe in the research. The public wants to be assured that researchers followed the appropriate guidelines for issues such as human rights, animal welfare, compliance with the law, conflicts of interest, safety, health standards and so on. The handling of these ethical issues greatly impact the integrity of the research project and can affect whether or not the project receives funding. Because ethical considerations are so important in research, many professional associations and agencies have adopted codes and policies that outline ethical behavior and guide researchers. These codes address issues such as honesty, objectivity,

Bell (2005) mentioned that ethical research involves acquiring informed consent of people to be interviewed, questioned, observed or taken materials from and reaching to an understanding of how the data will be used and analysis will be reported and published. In guiding the activities of researchers, Denscombe (2010) described three ethical; “protection of participants’ interest”, “avoiding deception or misinterpretation” and “informed consent of participants”.

The ability to confirm academic integrity of a piece of through programs such as Turnitin and paperrater.com helps to omit an unconscious error(s) of unintentional plagiarism, such as poor paraphrasing- not changing the wording of an excerpt well enough ( DiVincenzo, 2016). Computer programs also has enhanced the time effectiveness of checking spelling and grammar which are also of extreme