Ethical Issues in Professional Engineering and Science Practice

Invitation to participate

Investigators:   Marion Hersh is a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

The Study: This questionnaire is a follow-up to an earlier questionnaire on barriers to and enablers of ethics in a workplace/professional context. It aims to increase understanding of the experiences and views of scientists and engineers related to ethical issues in professional practice.

Procedures, confidentiality and anonymity: The questionnaire consists of five parts. Part A collects general career based information for statistical purposes. Parts B and C are both on page 3 of the survey. Part B looks at your views on ethical issues and part C ethical issues in employment. Parts D and E are both on page 4 of the survey. Part D investigates your education and training in ethical issues and Part E provides an opportunity to present additional comments and suggestions. You can complete the questionnaire in about 20 minutes and do so anonymously. The questionnaire is completely confidential and only the researcher (Marion Hersh) will see the responses.

Benefits and risks: The main benefits are contributing to better understanding of the experiences and views of scientists and engineers related to ethical issues in professional practice. There is minimal risk, as all possible steps have been taken to guarantee anonymity, which will ensure that no-one can learn your views. All questionnaires will be analysed anonymously even if not submitted anonymously.   However, electronic transmission of data is not 100% secure. The site used for the online questionnaire has a privacy policy. However, any participants concerned about the use of cookies or retention of their IP address are advised to use the electronic questionnaire and return it by email or post. The link is
http://web.eng.gla.ac.uk/assistive/pages/ethics-questionnaire.php
Please respond by Wednesday May 3.

Voluntary participation: Completing the questionnaire is completely voluntary. You should not feel under any pressure to respond. You can decide not to reply to one or more questions and to submit a partially complete questionnaire.

Publication: I am intending to submit the results for publication in AI and Society. I might use brief quotes from your comments, but they will be anonymous. I will make sure that no-one can guess your identity.

Ethical approval: I have received ethical approval from the Ethics Committee of the College of Science and Engineering of the University of Glasgow.

Further information: Please contact me if you have questions, would like further information about my research or would like to discuss any issues arising out of completing the questionnaire. Do also contact me if you would like a copy of the published results. I will store the contact addresses separately from the results.

Contact details:

Dr. Marion Hersh, marion.hersh@glasgow.ac.uk
Biomedical Engineering, Rankine Building University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8LT, Scotland

Thank you for much for considering participation in the study

Consent: Completing the questionnaire indicates that you have read the information about the study, are aware you can withdraw at any time, and have agreed to participate.