Ethics is important in engineering and engineering technology practice. Ethics are also important when doing and reporting research. There are three main areas to note: plagiarism, copyright and intellectual property, and research involving human subjects.

Plagiarism

In all cases, the way you collect, analyze, and use data must be ethical and consistent with professional standards of honesty and integrity. Lapses in integrity cannot only lead to poor quality reports in an academic context (poor grades and academic dishonesty penalties), but in the workplace, these lapses can also lead to lawsuits, loss of job, and even criminal charges. Some examples of these lapses include

• fabricating your own data (making it up to suit your purpose),
• ignoring data that disproves or contradicts your ideas,
• misrepresenting someone else’s data or ideas, and/or
• using data or ideas from another source without acknowledgment or citation of the source.

Plagiarism and You, by the Learning Portal, 2019. [Used under Fair Dealing]. Running time: 5:40

Failing to cite quoted, paraphrased or summarized sources properly is one of the most common lapses in academic integrity, which is why your previous communication classes spent considerable time and effort to give you a sophisticated understanding of how and why to avoid plagiarizing, as well as the consequences of doing so. If you would like to review this information, see the Academic Integrity webpage from Learning Services or see the Academic Integrity Course in Brightspace.

Copyright and Intellectual Property

Copyright is one form of intellectual property. Other examples of intellectual property (IP) include trademarks and patents. You may want to use proprietary information or data from a workplace. This is intellectual property of the company. Ask your instructor before using the information or data. If you want to learn more about IP, see What is Intellectual Property? from McMaster University. You can learn more about Copyright from a SaskPolytech librarian.

Human Research Ethics

“Primary research” is any research that you do yourself in which you collect raw data directly from the “real world” rather than from articles, books, or internet sources that have already collected and analyzed the data. If you are collecting data from human participants, you are engaging in “human research” and you must be aware of and follow strict ethical guidelines of your academic institution. Doing this is part of your responsibility to maintain academic integrity.

In Canada, any post-secondary educational institution that receives funding from one of the three federal granting bodies must ensure that all research involving humans conducted at that institution complies with the Tri-Council Policy Statement (2022). These rules are in place to protect people and communities from potential risk or harm and to ensure ethical conduct while doing research. In some cases, your program instructors may have applied for “course-based ethics approval” for students in their classes to conduct certain kinds of carefully limited research (such as surveys or interviews) for a class project or assignment. Ethics approval is generally required for research that collects data from human subjects in the following ways:

• Interviews: one-on-one or small group question and answer sessions. Interviews will provide detailed information from a small number of people and are useful when you want to get an expert opinion on your topic. For such interviews, you may need to have the participants sign an informed consent form before you begin.
• Surveys/Questionnaires: a form of questioning that is less flexible than interviews, as the questions are set ahead of time and cannot be changed. These involve much larger groups of people than interviews, but result in fewer detailed responses. Informed consent is made a condition of survey completion: the purpose of the survey/questionnaire and how data will be treated are explained in the introductory. Participants then choose to proceed or not.
• Naturalistic observation in non-public venues:  involves taking organized notes about occurrences related to your research. Observations allow you to gain objective information without the potentially biased viewpoint of an interview or survey. In naturalistic observations, the goal is to be as unobtrusive as possible, so that your presence does not influence or disturb the normal activities you want to observe. If you want to observe activities in a specific workplace, classroom, or other non-public places, you must first seek permission from the manager of that place and let participants know the nature of the observation. Observations in public places do not normally require approval. However, you may not photograph or video your observations without first getting the participants’ informed voluntary consent and permission.

These are the most common methods used in undergraduate courses. There are many other methods, including engaging with people and their information via social media, organizing focus groups, engaging in beta-testing or prototype trials, etc. But for the purposes of your writing course, these other methods are generally not recommended because they involve additional ethical considerations for you and your instructor.

Guidelines for Students Conducting Human Research

At SaskPolytech, it will be unlikely that you conduct research using human subjects. Should the opportunity arise, you must first check-in with your instructor who will determine what your next steps should be. In order to adhere to the ethical requirements involved in conducting human research, avoid the behaviour shown in Figure 1.5.1.

Instead, when conducting human research, you must abide by the guidelines in the chart below, including gaining informed consent and managing the data you collect.  For more detailed information, see SaskPolytech Policy 1102 Ethics of Research Involving Human Participants.

There may be additional issues that must addressed, such as accessibility and cultural considerations, but those listed above are the most essential. If you are unsure whether a particular line of inquiry or method of data collection requires ethics approval, you should ask your instructor, and your instructor should contact SaskPolytech’s Applied Research and Innovation. Most importantly, you should always be completely up front and honest about what and how you are researching.

It may seem like “a lot of fuss” to go through simply to ask people whether they prefer blue widgets or green widgets, but there are important reasons for these guidelines. In the past, people posing as students have conducted “surveys” on campus for unethical reasons, asking students questions that were inappropriate and even harassing. People participating in your research need to be reassured that you are doing this for a legitimate reason, and must be able to contact the relevant faculty member or the campus research ethics office to verify that you have authority to do this research.

For larger scale research projects, such as for a capstone course, or thesis, students must apply for ethics approval with their academic supervisor before doing any research involving human subjects. Failure to obtain ethics approval before conducting research may result in the data not being accepted as part of the project, thesis or program. It may prevent work from being accepted for publication, and can result in actions against the institution.

Why research needs ethics, by Science in Motion, 2020. [Used under Fair Dealing]. Running time: 6:37.

Designing a Survey

When designing a questionnaire to give to the public, you must avoid doing anything that would cause physical or emotional harm to your participants. For example, be careful how you word sensitive or controversial questions in surveys and during interviews.  Be careful to avoid inserting unintended bias or asking leading questions. You want to design questions to get meaningful and accurate responses rather than ambiguous information that is impossible to quantify or analyze. Figure 1.5.3 shows the ten steps in designing an effective survey.  For more detailed information on how to design effective and ethical questionnaires, see Purdue University’s OWL site for information on Creating Good Interview and Survey Questions.

If you plan to conduct a survey as part of your research project, you may be asked to provide your instructor with detailed information regarding your research methodology. Commonly requested details are in the checklist below.

References