Research Ethics in Higher Education: Individual Characteristics and Professional Responsibilities of Researchers

The purpose of this inquiry was determining evaluated research ethics in higher education with the concentration on individual characteristics and professional responsibilities of researchers in Tehran governmental universities.

The study was conducted through content analysis method with qualitative approach and the necessary information was collected through semi-structured interviews. Research population consisted of faculty members and graduate students from Tehran’ governmental universities. A total of 37 interviews were conducted with informants. In order to analyze the narrative information, content analysis was used in three consecutive process transcribing interviews and open coding.

The results revealed that researchers’ ethics can be divided into two categories, individual characteristics and professional responsibilities. The individual characteristics include commitment, honesty, motivation, Perseverance and patience and ethical responsibilities involve responsibilities to the community, sponsors, partners, subjects, research topic, other researchers, data collection and analysis, and publication of results.

Coclusion: 

generally be said to improve ethics of research among the scientific community requires attention to infrastructure development and quality in research.