Examining Chinese social sciences graduate students’ understanding of research ethics: implications for their research ethics education

Abstract

Using the research ethics scale (Huang et al., 2021) and follow-up interviews, this study examined Chinese social sciences graduate students’ understanding of research ethics of empirical studies involving human subjects. The participants included 463 Chinese graduate students majoring in teacher education, English education, management, and economics. The quantitative findings suggested that these graduate students had a fairly good understanding of researchers’ ethical responsibilities and developed general human subjects’ ethical awareness; furthermore, there existed significant research experience and gender-by-research experience interaction effects on their understanding of researchers’ ethical responsibilities and human subjects’ ethical awareness, respectively. The qualitative results indicated that the participants had realized the importance of ethics reviews for social sciences research including human subjects; and they identified best ways to promote research ethics education for social sciences graduate students in Chinese higher education. Implications for Chinese university leaders, program developers, and research methods professors are discussed.