Fostering an Ethical Research Community as Doctoral Students:
Building Our Own Professional Standards of Ethics
by
The Baruch College PhD Students of Marketing
Ann Bobel
Rhonda Hadi
Diogo Hildebrand
Veronika Ilyuk
Adriana Madzharov
Yan Meng
Zoe Rogers
Daniel Rubin
Lauren Trabold
Introduction
As doctoral students, we are in the formative years of our research careers. In developing our
foundation as scholars, a guiding ethical compass is paramount. It is especially important for us
to establish our ethical values right from the beginning to ensure that conducting research
ethically becomes second nature to us, helping to prevent ethical lapses later in our careers.
When our own professional standards of ethics are established from the very beginning, we
believe we are in a better position to maintain these standards as the pressures of our careers
inevitably increase over time.
At this point in our careers, we tend to work with advisers and fellow students via constant
dialogue and constructive feedback. In confronting unprecedented situations, we turn to each
other for guidance. Thus, when asked to formally codify our personal ethical standards, it was
natural for us to do so collaboratively. We brainstormed and documented our individual
reflections on ethical conduct as researchers and then came together to synthesize our
perspectives and build consensus for a shared code of ethics.
By formally documenting this ethical code, we hope to signal the importance of ethical
considerations in research and provide a more standard way to impart these guidelines to future
doctoral students at Baruch College.
I. The Big Picture: The Unique Position of PhD Students
● COMMUNITY. We are not just individuals conducting research at the same institution - we are
a community of researchers. Our community has an ethical standard to uphold, and each of us
is responsible for upholding it.
● COLLABORATION. A major difference between PhD students and veteran researchers is
that we students rarely work alone.
○ At a minimum, we conduct our research in a close partnership with our faculty
advisers.
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○ We often work in groups with fellow students; under these circumstances, the process
of building our work ethics becomes an easier task, as we have each other for support.
○ Collaboration allows for the sharing and exchange of ideas, giving of constructive
feedback, and helping each other if and when we face new and unexpected situations.
○ The collaborative student environment we experience highlights the importance of
faculty advisers and our fellow students in the development and maintenance of ethics in
our field.
● TRANSFER. With the collaborations mentioned above, we find that our personal code of
ethics, or our best practices, are strongly shaped by those around us and passed down
through generations by:
○ Our advisers - by advising and leading by example
○ More seasoned PhD students
It is our duty and responsibility to learn the ethical standards of the preceding generations and
to continue the transfer to the following generation.
II. More Specifically: Our Ethical Values and Their Applications
We, the Baruch College PhD Students of Marketing, conduct behavioral, experimental
laboratory research. Through our collective personal experiences, we have identified the values
we deem most important as a starting point in building our ethical standards as students. We
illustrate each of these values with examples from the research process, such as literature
review and debriefing, where we have the opportunity to use our unique experience as students
to establish a standard of ethics that we will uphold as a community and take with us as we
move further in our careers.
Value 1: THOROUGHNESS
●
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Application Example: Literature Review
○ We believe it is especially important to thoroughly review all relevant literature and try
to view our own research objectively within the bigger picture of extant literature, without
focusing narrowly on supporting our research question. It is of particular importance to
us to begin this practice as doctoral students because it will instill this practice in us as a
necessary part of the research process from the beginning.
○ Given the multidisciplinary nature of consumer research, we believe that it is crucial to
consult extant work in other disciplines to have an accurate understanding of the state of
research on our topic of interest. This not only allows us to view our research question
from different perspectives but also to create an extended community of scholars who
work together towards understanding of phenomena, giving each other proper
acknowledgment of individual contributions, reducing redundancy, and fostering novel
research.
○ It is also important to accurately cite the research selected for a literature review,
without selective interpretation of others’ results. By accurately and thoroughly citing the
work of our fellow colleagues we are making sure that the theoretical building blocks of
our field are sound. Then, when researchers use our literature to build their theoretical
development in future research projects, it will be accurate rather than losing a bit of
integrity and accuracy with every citation and interpretation.
Value 2: TRANSPARENCY
●
Application Example: Data Collection
○ We, as PhD students often run our studies together, as we share time in the
laboratory. Thus, we learn from each other in terms of interacting with human subjects.
●
Application Example: Debriefing
o With proper debriefing and sharing the true purpose of our research with our subjects,
we are demystifying the experiment, and we can slowly, one subject pool at a time, work
toward changing any negative perceptions of the marketing field.
o This kind of transparency between researchers and subjects is something small that
we, as students on the front lines, can do that can ultimately lead to changes over time if
carried on by subsequent generations of student researchers.
Value 3: CONSISTENCY
●
Application Example: Data Collection
○ Working together with other PhD students and faculty advisers in the lab allows us to
learn from each other about proper research standards and etiquette.
○ We encourage consistency and objectivity in our interactions with study participants.
○ We strive to treat all study participants fairly and consistently across studies.
○ The research process becomes more uniform as we each learn to interact with our
students in the same way.
Value 4: RESPECT
●
Application Example: Data Collection
○ We believe that treating our participants with respect and courtesy during the data
collection process is integral. We ensure that our participants are in no way
uncomfortable with or feel coerced to participate in our studies.
○ Offering respect to our subjects reinforces their significance in the research process. In
turn, such feelings of importance in enhancing scientific knowledge result in a more
serious and committed involvement with our experiments, and decrease the probability
of subjects providing thoughtless answers in response to perceived unimportance of the
work.
○ Such commitment and attentiveness enhances the validity of our data.
○ Treating our subjects with respect also enhances perceptions of our field, thereby
increasing participants’ willingness and desire to be part of our studies.
○ We believe that offering respect to our participants is crucial at different stages of the
data collection process - from informed consent to active participation.
Value 5: HONESTY
●
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Application Example: Debriefing
○ We believe that debriefing is a part of the research process that carries an important
and beneficial role for both participants and researchers.
○ Openness and honesty about the true purpose of our studies and procedures is
something that we owe to our participants who give us their time and effort.
○ Debriefing is one way through which we help our participants learn the true value of
consumer research for understanding consumers and ultimately for contributing to both
consumer welfare and general scientific knowledge.
○ We strongly believe that debriefing helps participants expand their own knowledge of
marketing research and become better educated consumers.
○ By committing ourselves to proper debriefing, we promote knowledge and trust in our
discipline and hope to positively enhance the image of the entire field of marketing.
Value 6: PROMOTION OF CONSUMER WELL-BEING
●
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Application Example: Study Design
○ As consumer researchers, we may face the challenge of whether in our research we
should focus on questions that ultimately aim at improving consumer welfare or on
questions that strictly contribute to general knowledge in the field.
○ As such, it could be argued that what we choose to study is an ethical question just as
much as how we study it.
○ Our ethical values apply not only to how we conduct ourselves throughout the
research process, but these values also guide us to what research questions we choose
to undertake.
○ If we believe in respect and sharing not just with our subjects but with all consumers,
we may choose to tackle questions that could have a positive impact on the lives of
consumers.
○ We do not want to just do research - we want to do research that matters.