We were bombarded to give our response in a survey. At first, I just did not pay any attention to that. I just have a quick look and moved on to other things. But, it keeps on appearing on the email and Whatsapp. Then, this made me to stop for a while and closely inspected the survey.
As I was preparing notes for my research methodology class yesterday, something bugged me. I just could not help from thinking about certain things that I know very well are not ethical when conducting research. What makes it unbelievable is the fact that we have abundant professors at the university and yet such unethical aspects are so glaringly happened right in front of our eyes. These highly esteemed professors should be consulted to avoid this kind of things from happening.
I discussed this with few friends. Some said that they refuse to answer the survey regardless of the consequences. I told one of my seniors, I wanted to check out the rest of the items to confirm my hunch. Since there are certain things being forced on us (uhuk uhuk to answer first before moving to the next part), I decided to look at the survey closely.
I answered all of the items but at the same time, I wrote down certain things that I found in the survey about some of the items (unethical things). I discussed this again with my seniors. We agree that something is not right about the survey.
After completing the survey, I wrote an email to the person in charge. My intention is to raise the awareness about certain things that might be overlooked by them. I also gave the person in charge a title of a book that can be referred if they want to know more about research ethics (tongue in cheek remark!).
The title of the book is “100 questions (and answers) about research ethics” by Emily E Anderson dan Amy Corneli (Sage, 2018).