Research Rationale — Justifiable Interventions

Abstract

All human participant research interferes in some way with the lives of other human beings. Such interference may only amount to taking up an individual’s time — the ‘harm’ caused, at the very least, requires the subject to devote some of their precious time to an endeavour that was not freely chosen or instigated by them. That is, it is a sacrifice of time given over to a researcher’s goals and objectives. Or even if the research data are gathered from naturalistic observation, whereby none of a subject’s time is diverted and unnaturally taken up, the publication of the findings may disturb the public perception of their sense of a ‘natural’ social order. If there were no research outputs, and so no other potential consequences for subjects’ lives, there would be little point in conducting the research in the first place.KeywordsPrimary ResearchSecondary ResearchArchival StudyResearch RationaleContemporary ConcernThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.