Question

Define ethics. What are the guiding ethical principles of program evaluation? What can happen if evaluators/researchers abandon ethical guidelines when conducting evaluations? What are the ethical considerations related to human subject research/evaluation?

Answer 1

Ethics is nothing but a set of moral principles. Ethics play an important role in people's decision making process, it affects their lives. What is good for individuals and society comes under ethics.

Many organizations have ethical guidelines for evaluation of their various programs. A few guidelines are discussed below:

a) Independent: Program evaluators must be free from all restrictions. The management should not impose any limit on the scope, content, recommendation and results of evaluation of programs.

b) Transparent: The results of evaluation should be transparent, it should be clear and easy to understand.

c) Ethical: Evaluation should not be based on personal or group interests. It should be for the benefits of all. Evaluators must be honest, professional, respect the rights of institutions and individuals to provide information in a confidential manner.

d) Impartial: Evaluation should be bias free. Evaluators should not give importance to a particular group or a person, their evaluation should be impartial.

e) High quality: Evaluation should meet the prescribed quality standard so that there will not any compromise regarding the quality.

f) Timely: All evaluation need to be completed within a specified time limit.

If evaluators abandon ethical guidelines when conducting evaluations then the results of evaluation may be wrong or unacceptable by people. There may be partiality while conducting evaluation and because of that results may be erratic and misleading.The quality of the evaluation may not good and because of no guidelines the evaluators may create delay in the evaluation process.

Human subject research needs some ethical guidelines for the protection of dignity of subjects and the declaration of results of research.

a) Be informed about the subject: The researcher need to be well informed about the subject of research. He has to study the subject in a detailed manner and progress accordingly, otherwise there will be confusion and the result will be misleading for all.

b) Should not be harmful: The research should not be harmful to others. The researcher should be honest and professional, he should be careful while doing research on human beings.

c) Timely and confidential: The research should be timely and confidential. Any information regarding a person should be kept confidential and submitted only to the authorized person.