Ethical Rules

The Ethical Rules We Support

The Research Society Code Of Professional Behaviour (The Code) outlines the ethical rules for market and social researchers. It underscores the unique responsibility when involving children, young people, and vulnerable community groups. It also aims to boost public trust in this field by highlighting public entitlement to rights and safeguards, and to reduce the need for government or intergovernmental regulation. 

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The Code

The Code defines the following behaviour:

• Researchers must conform to all relevant state, national and international laws;

• Researchers must behave ethically and must not do anything which might damage the reputation of market, social and organisational research;

• Researchers must take special care when carrying out research among children, young people, and other vulnerable groups in the community;

• When participants’ agreement to participate is being obtained, their cooperation must be voluntary and based on adequate, and not misleading, information about the general purpose and nature of the project. All such statements must be honoured;

• The rights of participants as individuals must be respected by researchers;

• They must not be harmed or adversely affected as a result of cooperating in a research project;

• Participants’ identifiable research information must not, without their consent, be revealed to anyone not directly involved in the research project and not be used for any non-research activity directed to individual participants;

• Researchers must ensure that research projects are designed, carried out, reported and documented accurately, and transparently;

• Researchers must conform to accepted principles of fair and reasonable competition.