Ethics & Bias Checklist

Before you contact anyone, write what you will tell participants, how you will handle their data, where your study could harm or pressure people, and which design choice guards against each bias that could skew the answers.

Two kinds of support. The ethics half is a normative standard you comply with, not a research finding (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979), plus data protection law. The bias half is strong research (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960; Orne, 1962; Mangel & Samaniego, 1984). The minimum group size for reporting is a rule of thumb.

Use it when:

• You are about to interview, survey or observe people, inside or outside your organization.
• You are studying your own team, colleagues or customers, where power and relationships can shape what people say.
• You will store notes, recordings or answers that could identify someone.

Skip it when:

• You only analyze published, aggregated data with no individuals in it: check source quality with 2.15 Source Quality Ladder instead.
• The study is formal academic or clinical research: use your institution's ethics review process; this page does not replace it.

This page joins two kinds of support. The ethics half rests on principles, not findings: respect for persons, beneficence and justice were adopted as standards for research on people (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979), and data protection law adds legal duties. You comply with these; you do not weigh evidence for them. The bias half rests on strong research. People tilt their answers toward what seems socially acceptable (Crowne and Marlowe, 1960), and participants respond to what they think the researcher wants (Orne, 1962). Observers who know what they are looking for can inflate what they find (Mahtani et al., 2018), and conclusions drawn only from the cases that made it into the sample go wrong in predictable ways (Mangel and Samaniego, 1984). Some popular labels here, such as the Hawthorne effect, are themselves contested.

So every block ends in a concrete measure, since a ticked box with no named action protects no one. Each bias line asks for a design choice rather than an intention, and the red flags in Step 5 are there for when the study is already moving.

Write the sentence you will use to explain the study, then tick what participants will know before they agree.

Strong answer: "I'm asking about the new shift pattern so we can decide whether to keep it. It takes twenty minutes, you can skip any question or stop, and I'll only report themes from the whole group, never who said what." Not: "Your input is valuable to us."

What we will tell participants, in one or two sentences:

• ☐ What the study is about and what decision it feeds.
• ☐ What they will be asked to do, and how long it takes.
• ☐ How their answers will be used and who will see them.
• ☐ That taking part is voluntary and they can stop at any time.
• ☐ Consent is recorded (written, or noted verbally with the date).
• ☐ No deception, and any conflict of interest is disclosed.

Illustrative example: the organization, the roles and all numbers are made up.

A warehouse in Jönköping tried a new shift pattern for three months. The operations manager wants to interview about twelve pickers before deciding whether to keep it.

Step 1: The opening sentence names the decision, the twenty minutes, the right to stop, and that only group themes will be reported. Consent is noted with a date.

Step 2: Notes use codes; the key sits in a separate folder only the interviewer can open; everything is deleted by the end of June. No health or family details are recorded. The data protection officer checked the plan.

Step 3: The pickers report to team leaders who designed the pattern. An HR partner from another site runs the interviews instead of the manager, and team leaders see only the summary.

Step 4: Ticked: selection (night-shift pickers are hard to reach; guard: interviews at the start of night shifts), social desirability (guard: ask about the last three shifts before opinions) and confirmation (the manager hopes to keep the pattern; guard: the HR partner codes the notes).

Step 5: Approved by the site manager. The HR partner rechecks after five interviews.