Ethics in Research MCQ Quiz - Objective Question with Answer for Ethics in Research - Download Free PDF

The correct answer is -  UGC mandates institutions to use plagiarism detection tools

Key Points

• UGC mandates the use of plagiarism detection tools
  • Under the UGC's 2018 Plagiarism Regulations, institutions must use plagiarism detection software to ensure research integrity.
  • The regulation encourages institutions to establish mechanisms for preventing plagiarism in academic and research papers.
  • Plagiarism detection tools are critical in identifying copied content, ensuring proper citations, and maintaining academic honesty.

Additional Information

• Plagiarism Regulations
  • The UGC's 2018 regulations define plagiarism as presenting someone else's work, ideas, or intellectual property as one's own.
  • Research misconduct, including plagiarism, is subject to penalties ranging from penalties to disqualification, depending on the severity of the violation.
  • Plagiarism can include direct copying, paraphrasing without proper citation, and using the same work in multiple publications (self-plagiarism).
• Accountability for Plagiarism
  • Plagiarism is not restricted to students alone; faculty members are also held accountable for research misconduct.
  • Plagiarism affects the credibility of academic research and violates ethical standards within academic publishing.

The correct answer is - 2) A and B only

Key Points

• Informed Consent
  • All participants must give their informed consent before taking part in a research project. This ensures that they are voluntarily participating with full understanding of the research.
• Adequate Information
  • Participants should be provided with sufficient information about the experiment, including its purpose, procedures, potential risks, and benefits. This allows them to make an informed decision about their participation.
• Unethical Practices
  • Rough treatment of participants is never justifiable. Ethical research must prioritize the safety and well-being of participants.
  • Including unwilling participants is unethical as it violates the principle of voluntary participation.

Additional Information

• Ethical Guidelines
  • Research involving human participants must adhere to ethical guidelines such as those outlined by the Declaration of Helsinki and the Belmont Report.
  • These guidelines emphasize principles like respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.
• Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)
  • IRBs review research proposals to ensure that ethical standards are met and that participants' rights and welfare are protected.
  • They evaluate factors such as risk minimization, equitable participant selection, and informed consent processes.
• Informed Consent Process
  • The informed consent process involves providing potential participants with comprehensive information about the study and obtaining their voluntary agreement to participate.
  • This process should be documented, and participants should have the opportunity to ask questions and withdraw from the study at any time without penalty.

The correct answer is - 10 percent

Key Points

• UGC Guidelines on Plagiarism
  • According to the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines, plagiarism is a serious academic offense.
  • The guidelines specify different levels of penalties based on the percentage of similarity in the text.
  • A similarity of up to 10 percent does not invite any penalty.

Additional Information

• Plagiarism Levels and Penalties
  • UGC guidelines categorize plagiarism into four levels:
    • Level 0: Similarities up to 10% - No penalty.
    • Level 1: Similarities above 10% and up to 40% - Written warning and resubmission of the work.
    • Level 2: Similarities above 40% and up to 60% - Debarment from submitting a revised script for 1 year.
    • Level 3: Similarities above 60% - Cancellation of registration.
  • Understanding these levels helps in maintaining academic integrity and avoiding severe penalties.
• Academic Integrity
  • Academic integrity is crucial for maintaining trust and credibility in educational institutions.
  • Students and researchers are encouraged to produce original work and properly cite sources to avoid plagiarism.

The correct answer is - Passive Deception

Key Points

• Passive Deception
  • Passive deception occurs when certain details about the study are withheld from participants, but no false information is presented to them.
  • This practice is used to prevent participants from altering their behavior in a way that could bias the study's outcomes.
  • Unlike active deception, which involves providing false information, passive deception simply omits details until the appropriate time, such as during the debriefing.
  • Despite withholding information, passive deception still adheres to ethical guidelines as participants are not misled, just not fully informed initially.

Additional Information

• Active Deception
  • Active deception, or intentional deception, involves providing participants with false information or misleading them about certain aspects of the study.
• Full Disclosure
  • Full disclosure means providing participants with complete and accurate information about the study, including its purpose, procedures, risks, and benefits.
• Confidentiality
  • Confidentiality refers to the ethical practice of keeping participants' data private and ensuring that their personal information is protected throughout and after the study.

The correct answer is - Informed Consent

Key Points

• Informed Consent
  • Informed consent is the process of providing potential participants with all necessary information about the study, including its purpose, procedures, risks, and benefits, before they agree to participate.
  • It ensures that participants make an informed and voluntary decision about their involvement in the study.
  • The informed consent process includes explaining the study in a language and manner that is understandable to the participants.
  • It also involves providing participants with the opportunity to ask questions and withdraw from the study at any time without penalty.
  • This process is a fundamental ethical requirement in research involving human subjects to ensure their autonomy and protection.

Additional Information

• Voluntary Participation
  • Voluntary participation refers to the principle that participants should freely choose to join a study without any coercion or undue influence.
• Ethical Clearance
  • Ethical clearance is the formal approval given by an ethics review board to ensure that a study meets ethical standards and guidelines.
• Participant Assurance
  • Participant assurance generally involves measures taken to reassure participants regarding the ethical conduct of the study and the handling of their data, although it is not a formal research term like informed consent.

Ethics are the principle or guidelines that help us to uphold the things we value.

Research is a multi-stage process. Ethics are central to the research process. Researchers need to take care of various ethical issues at different levels of this process.

• There are many ethical issues to be taken into serious consideration for research. For example, securing the actual permission and interests of all those involved in the study. 
• There should not misuse of any of the information discovered, and there should be a certain moral responsibility maintained towards the participants. 
• There is a duty to protect the rights of people in the study as well as their privacy and sensitivity. Besides this highest level of ethical standards is maintained at the stage of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. 
• The data must be true, real, and free from assumption.
• The analyses must be done in a scientific manner and within strict pre-defined parameters, there should not be any scope of bias or prejudice. The standard must be unquestionable. 
• It should be free from bias and prejudices.
• The entire results of the research depend a lot on the authenticity of the data.

Identifying the research variables and defining the research variables are more concerned with the theoretical approach and not false under strict research parameters.

Therefore, option 1 in research is least vulnerable to research ethics.

UGC- CARE:

1. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has approved a list of journals, in that the UGC has decided to establish a Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE).
2. The good quality Research Journals in disciplines under Social Sciences, Humanities, Languages, Arts, Culture, Indian Knowledge Systems etc., will be maintained by CARE and referred to as ‘CARE Reference List of Quality Journals’. This will be used for all academic purposes. 

1. UGC-CARE is the  “Quality Mandate” of the University Grants Commission (UGC) emphasizes the importance of promoting high-quality research and the creation of new knowledge by faculty members.
2. For this purpose, efforts to distinguish between the standard and predatory/ dubious/deceptive journals and ensure that Indian academic work appears only in globally recognized and acceptable journals, the UGC has set up a Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE), as announced vide the UGC’s notification of 14 January 2019 to continuously monitor and identify quality journals across disciplines.
3. The main task of the CARE is to improve the quality of research in Indian universities and to promote academic and research integrity as well as publication ethics.

Therefore, Option 4 is the correct answer.

Note: As informed by University Grants Commission (UGC), a number of Joint Research Programmes (JRP) have been implemented through  Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs)/Agreements between the Government of India and the Government of other countries like the USA, UK, Israel, Norway, New Zealand, and Germany (thus the other options were excluded). Thus International collaborative research does not come under the preview of UGC- CARE.

Ethics, which means rules of conduct or moral principles, gain importance when it comes to the domain of research because the outcome of the research is directly influenced by the integrity of the researcher.

Key Points

Plagiarism:

• Plagiarism is a moral, ethical and legal issue.
• It is unscrupulously copying from someone else’s work and making use of it without their knowledge.           

• It occurs when an individual lifts someone else’s intellectual works such as ideas, opinions or writings as such or in a modified form and passes them off as his/her original work with or without permission.
• Few explicit examples of Plagiarism are:

1. Copying sentences or paragraphs from books and articles without quotation marks
2. Taking credit for work created or done by somebody else
3. Copying from Internet sources through “cut and paste”
4. Producing a written work as independent work when it has been produced with the unacknowledged help of another person.
5. Using any of your own previously published works such as texts, articles, and research results, and make it look new (self-plagiarism).

Additional Information

• Creative use of data is not plagiarism because the data is subjected to further intellectual processing.
• Quoting or citing gives credit to the original author and so it is not copying of information from others.
• Referring to previous data and working on it with new objectives makes it a novel study as the results obtained wouldn’t be the same.

Hence, it is clear from the given points that plagiarism in research is copying unscrupulously and making use of it.

A copyright is a sort of intellectual property that grants its owner the sole authority to reproduce, transmit, adapt, exhibit, and perform a creative work. 

Key Points

• The creative work could take the form of something musical, artistic, educational, or literary. 
• A creative work's original expression of a concept is what copyright is meant to protect, not the idea itself.
• Copyrights may be given under public law, in which case they are referred regarded as "territorial rights."
• Fair use is actually assessed on a case-by-case basis, thus there are no clear-cut guidelines. 
• Copyright law does provide four criteria that must be taken into account when determining whether a usage qualifies as fair use.
• A party may use a copyrighted work for legitimate purposes such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

So, As per copyright laws, 'Fair-use' allows the limited use of copyrighted works for Educational purposes. 

Additional Information

• In India, Section 13 of the Copyright Act of 1957 deals with literary works, theatrical works, musical works, creative works, cinematograph films, and sound recordings

Key Points

 The ethical considerations in research:

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from people. It includes:

Voluntary participation- Voluntary participation means that all research subjects are free to choose to participate without any pressure or coercion.

Informed consent- Informed consent refers to a situation in which all potential participants receive and understand all the information they need to decide whether they want to participate. This includes information about the study’s benefits, risks, funding, and institutional approval.

Anonymity- Anonymity means that the researcher does not know who the participants are and they can’t link any individual participant to their data.

Confidentiality- Confidentiality means that the researcher know who the participants are, but they remove all identifying information from the report.

Potential for harm- It means that physical, social, psychological and all other types of harm are kept to an absolute minimum.

Results communication- The way the researcher communicates the research results can sometimes involve ethical issues. Good science communication is honest, reliable, and credible. It’s best to make the results as transparent as possible. It includes avoiding Plagiarism. Plagiarism means submitting others’ works as your own. Although it can be unintentional, copying someone else’s work without proper credit amounts to stealing. It’s an ethical problem in research communication because they may benefit by harming other researchers.

Hence, The ethical considerations in research includes:

(B) Informed consent

(C) Avoiding plagiarism
(D) Proper referencing

Research ethics:

• Research ethics govern the standards of conduct for scientific researchers.
• It is important to adhere to ethical principles in order to protect the dignity, rights, and welfare of research participants.
• Research ethics and its observance are necessary for the interest of credibility and quality of research.
• This is because the policy-making bodies have to be accountable for pursuing research with an eye on promoting excellence.

Principles of research ethics:

• Honesty: Honestly report data, results, methods and procedures, and publication status. Do not fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent data.
• Objectivity: Strive to avoid bias in experimental design, data analysis, data interpretation, peer review, personnel decisions, grant writing, expert testimony, and other aspects of research.
• Integrity: Keep your promises and agreements; act with sincerity; strive for consistency of thought and action.
• Carefulness: Avoid careless errors and negligence; carefully and critically examine your own work and the work of your peers. Keep good records of research activities.
• Openness: Share data, results, ideas, tools, resources. Be open to criticism and new ideas.
• Confidentiality: Protect confidential communications, such as papers or grants submitted for publication, personnel records, trade or military secrets, and patient records.
• Respect for intellectual property: Honor patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property. Do not use unpublished data, methods, or results without permission. Give credit where credit is due. Never plagiarize.
• Competence: Maintain and improve your own professional competence and expertise through lifelong education and learning; take steps to promote competence in science as a whole.
• Legality: Know and obey relevant laws and institutional and governmental policies.
• Respect to all: respect for colleagues, respect for human properties, non-discrimination

:

• Every research institute has to enforce research ethics in order to ensure the credibility and meaningfulness of human inquiry
• ICT tools are mainly used by researchers for their ability to ease the knowledge-gathering process and to enhance resource-development. 
• Researchers in general value creativity and originality.
• ICT tools that provide the most open situations with great autonomy to the researcher can really help in identifying and solving research problems in the most creative ways.
• ICT tools help to manage information, protect them, and maintain confidentiality using specific keys.

Therefore, Statement I is correct but Statement II is incorrect.

Patency

• A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention. In other words, a patent is an exclusive right to a product or a process that generally provides a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. To get a patent, technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application.
• The patent owner may give permission to, or license, other parties to use the invention on mutually agreed terms. The owner may also sell the right to the invention to someone else, who will then become the new owner of the patent. Once a patent expires, the protection ends, and an invention enters the public domain; that is, anyone can commercially exploit the invention without infringing the patent.

Copy rights

• Copyright (or author’s right) is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture, and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.
• The Copyright Act, 1957 (the ‘Act’) came into effect from January 1958. 

IP

• Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.

• IP is protected in law by, for example, patents, copyright and trademarks, which enable people to earn recognition or financial benefit from what they invent or create. By striking the right balance between the interests of innovators and the wider public interest, the IP system aims to foster an environment in which creativity and innovation can flourish.

Research ethics are the guidelines that a researcher should follow while conducting research. Research ethics helps and educates researchers to follow ethical standards. The following are some research ethics that a researcher should follow:

1. Honesty: The researcher should collect the data honestly with proper methods, procedures. He/she should not falsify, fabricate or misrepresent the data.
2. Respect the Intellectual property: A researcher should respect the copyrights, patents, or any other intellectual property rights, he/she should not use unpublished data without permission.
3. Publish the data responsibly: A researcher should never copy the data and use it as his own in any research publication. The researcher cannot use any research paper and publish the same as a new research paper, it may lead to plagiarism which is unethical in research.

Additional Information
A researcher should also follow the following research ethics while doing research:

• He/she should share the ideas, results, data, and resources used by him during his research.
• He/she should protect confidential communications like grants, papers, and other records submitted for publication.

Thus, option 2 is the correct answer.

Ethics in research refers to the principles of moral behavior and conduct that researchers are expected to uphold in order to ensure the protection of human subjects and the integrity of scientific inquiry.

Key PointsExplanation:

• Plagiarism involves using someone else's work or ideas without giving them credit, which is a form of intellectual theft and violates ethical standards in research.
• Coercion involves using force or threats to obtain research participation, which is a violation of the ethical principle of voluntary participation.
• Breach of confidentiality occurs when a researcher discloses identifiable information about participants without their consent, which is a violation of the ethical principle of confidentiality.
• Beneficence is an ethical principle that requires researchers to maximize benefits and minimize harms to participants in their research, but it is not an ethical problem itself.
• Fidelity is an ethical principle that requires researchers to be truthful and keep promises made to participants, but it is not an ethical problem itself.

Therefore, the ethical problems in research include plagiarism, coercion, and breach of confidentiality.

Conclusion: The correct answers are A, B, and C.

The correct answer is Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics

Key Points

•  UGC-CARE- A Quality Mandate for Indian Academia
  • It aimed To match global standards of high-quality research in all academic disciplines under the purview of the University Grants Commission (UGC) to stimulate and empower the Indian academia through its “Quality Mandate”.
  • A public notice was issued by the UGC on the 28th of November, 2018, to announce the establishment of a dedicated Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE) to carry out this mandate.
• Objectives of the UGC-CARE
  • To promote quality research, academic integrity and publication ethics in Indian universities.
  • To promote high-quality publications in reputed journals that would help achieve higher global ranks.
  • To develop an approach and methodology for the identification of good-quality journals.
  • To prevent publications in predatory/dubious/sub-standard journals, which reflect adversely and tarnish the image of Indian academia.
  • To create and maintain a “UGC-CARE Reference List of Quality Journals” (UGC-CARE List) for all academic purposes.