What is Research Ethics?

About the lecture

In this lecture, we explore research ethics as a definitive field within the area of ethics more generally, which is concerned with how researchers, conductors, and funders conduct and manage research in-line with ethical principles, focusing in particular on: (i) describing ethics as being based around moral judgements, drawing on principles of moral philosophy; (ii) the four primary sources of research ethics guidance being funding bodies, learned societies, research centres, and universities; (iii) research ethics as it is in psychology, describing the four key principles of human research ethics from the British Psychological Society; (iv) the other side of research, focusing on the four key principles of best practice in an ethics review.

About the lecturer

John Oates is emeritus professor of developmental psychology at the Open University. His special field of research is child development, specifically perinatal mental health and early child development. Professor Oates is the lead for the British Psychological Society code of human research ethics and has a position in Brussels working for the European Research Council reviewing research bids. Some of Professor Oates’ recent publications include ‘Social constructions of mental health among Romani in Ukraine’ (2021) and ‘Mothers’ perceptions of their infants’ (2019).