Education, empiricism and the ethical dimension–a real life student–centred research report

Abstract

This paper reports on a classroom project with third–year undergraduate students on the Accounting degree at the University of Hull, England, designed to provide controlled and integrated exposure to elementary research design and techniques. The primary objective of this project was to introduce undergraduate financial accounting students to the advantages, disadvantages and limitations of different types of research method, to the development and testing of hypotheses, and to the analysis and interpretation of survey data. This was achieved through student participation in the completion of a questionnaire on creative accounting which is available in the public domain. A secondary objective was to investigate the views of UK final–year undergraduate accounting students, before their exposure to ‘real’ accounting work, on some fundamental ethical issues. The paper suggests that, as a classroom learning aid, the exercise was successful, although extensions and developments to make it more so are also discussed. Our results suggest that further comparative development at other institutions would be beneficial both from the educational perspective and from the ethical research perspective. Students were generally appreciative and enthusiastic regarding both the research methodology aspects of the project and the ethical considerations aspects.