Research Ethics
Professional Codes

Some associations, including the American Political Science Association (APSA), have codes that specify ethical conduct for their members. APSA’s ethics code is far ranging, and includes ethical guidelines for hiring, and for professor-graduate student relations, classroom ethics, sexual harassment, and publishing ethics for instance. Today in Canada many such ethical issues are governed mostly by provincial human rights codes, or by university-level rules. The broader set of issues covered by APSA's code are all important and the CPSA may wish to consider a professional code like APSA's in the future. At present the working group examining research ethics issues for the CPSA Board and this part of the CPSA website on research ethics are focused more specifically on the current research ethics regime and the proposals to change it and not on all the ethical issues covered by APSA's code. APSA's code and some other codes are provided below.

APSA, Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science:
http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/ethicsguideweb.pdf

Statement of Professional Ethics of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association:
http://www.csaa.ca/structure/Code.htm

Society of Professional Journalists
http://www.spj.org/ethics.asp

American Association for Public Opinion Research
http://www.aapor.org/aaporcodeofethics

For background see also:

Reynolds, Paul Davidson, and Mark S. Frankel (1977) “Codes of Ethics in the Social Sciences: Two Recent Surveys,” Newsletter on Science, Technology, & Human Values, No. 18 (Jan., 1977), pp. 15-19. Available through JSTOR.

Bullock, Merry and Sangeeta Panicker (2003). “Ethics for all: Differences across scientific society codes” Science and Engineering Ethics Volume 9, Number 2 / June, pp. 159-170.