Whether or not it is acceptable or ethical to use internet sources as data for qualitative studies could easily be a topic with very good potential for debate... So here it goes.
To be ethical in psychology there is an extensive set of guidelines that must be followed, but for arguments sake, lets funnel down and define 'ethical' as being morally correct or intrinsic, which in this case means 'good of itself', being used for information and informations sake only. And we too will define 'qualitative' as information that isn't collected in numerical form, such as opinions, open ended question/ answers or anything that can generate a varied response.
First off, if there does happen to be someone out there, psychologist or not who does not use the internet... Where have you been!? The internet is the teacher of our generation! Where would we be without wikipedia seriously!?
For the fact that connectivity is so intrenched in everything we do, I would have to disagree with the idea that using the internet as a source of data for qualitative studies is unethical.
Of course it's ethical!
An example being that if we wanted to find out why people disagreed with SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) we could easily type 'SOPA disagree' or something similar into any blogging site and there is your answer (for that particular site anyway) and then go on to find out why they disagree.
Further more I don't see any ethical breach in using the internet as a means of data because as long as the source of your information is credited, their opinion remains their own and is also respected by your need as a psychologist to reference anything contributed by others.
It would appear that this moral questioning is more an issue of 'why is the data gatherer being so lazy?' rather than 'why are they breaching ethical boundaries?'
Due to the need to reference sources and the dependence on the internet as a means of communication, information and entertainment the ethics of using the internet as a source for any type of study should no longer be in question. After all it is the quickest way to get your voice heard, especially when you're trying to cover as much ground as possible.
But what do you think? ethical or unethical.
I think it is ethical to use the internet as a source for qualitative research as the internet will allow the researcher to gain opinions from a huge sample. The sample will also consist of a variety of different types of people with varying points of view. It is also a very quick way of gaining information as you mentioned you can just type something into google and hundreds of different web pages will come up regarding that topic. Therefore I feel not using the internet would be a waste of a resource.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you that the Internet should not be seen as an unethical source of information; if something online is credited, or even written, at least someone out there with SOME knowledge of the topic area has the opinion that you have discovered just on that one piece.
ReplyDeleteI would, also, say that perhaps it isn't even being lazy. Yes, it is the easiest, quickest way, but does this necessarily mean that it isn't a good way? It seems to just be prejudice against it in favour of more traditional, slower means of gathering information.
Indeed, if the Internet is an unethical source of information, would anyone using the blogs we're writing for anything be acting unethically?
Alternatively, and related to a point you made, would they be stealing our ideas? Or, like the issue of it being unethical, is this a load of nonsense, too? As a sidepoint, users who happened to want to find out information about why others disagreed with other topics, such as ACTA, could use resources such as YouTube to find out, such as here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=citzRjwk-sQ