Utrecht University is a member of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands and has contributed to drafting agreements that must be complied with across the Netherlands. The university has also drafted various guidelines on its own and attaches great importance to ethics and integrity. For example, the university says the following about its own institute: ‘Utrecht University stands for professional and high-quality academic work and ethically responsible research and teaching. The university is committed to upholding academic integrity, and it also strives to make ethically responsible choices in its research’ (UU, 2018a).

But how do you make ethically responsible choices in research? A number of basic principles for good research are laid out in the Code of Conduct that applies to all staff and students at Utrecht University. This code of conduct specifically addresses the importance of ambition, commitment, respect and scrupulousness for students. Among other things, it tells students that ‘Students at Utrecht University are preparing for careers and responsible positions in society. This requires intellectual curiosity, active participation in the study programme and extracurricular activities, and the effort necessary to achieve good grades.’ (UU, 2018b).

To emphasise the importance of ethics and integrity within these principles, the Code of Conduct for Scrupulous Academic Practice and Integrity was adopted in July 2014. This supplementary document cites seven points that Utrecht University stands for. Students are (also) directly addressed in point two:
‘Within Utrecht University, the onus is on all staff, students and other stakeholders in teaching and research to uphold scrupulous academic standards and integrity.’ (UU, 2018a).

Social science as an institution changed in the last century. In 1991, the leading academic journal Progress in Human Geography published an article by M.R. Curry in which he argued that geographers must discuss developments in the academic field that were having a large influence on academic practice at that time. He described the rise and growing power of academic journals as compared to books, the changing citation culture, the slow disappearance of replicating/falsifying research from leading journals and the outright mistakes that were coming to the surface around that time (Curry, 1991).

The field was also changing thematically. Human geography and spatial planning were increasingly consolidating themselves as social, people-centred disciplines in which social relationships are often part of the research themes. The importance of ethics and integrity became more central (Smith, 1997). David M. Smith (1997) made a bold attempt to create a first literature review of how ethics and integrity were being dealt with in Human Geography and Spatial Planning. He noted what he called a ‘moral turn’ (p. 583) in which increasing attention was being paid to social justice, subjectivism and relativism.

Around the turn of the century, Proctor (1998) observed that geographers had increasingly begun to focus on the spatial dimensions of social justice, which, among other things, was reflected in influential works by geographers like David Harvey and David M. Smith. This means that, according to him, moral questions inherently arise in the research process. For example, he asked (Proctor, 1998, p.9):

• Is it wrong to bend data to support one‘s conclusions?
• To publish data gathered under some assumption of confidentiality on the part of the research subject?
• To publish a work based substantially on the research of one’s graduate student(s) as one’s own?
• To enter the policy arena as a scientist, where objectivity and partiality could well clash?

As he noted in his article in Area – now widely cited in this field – until then little concrete attention had been paid to ethics and integrity within the discipline because positivistism and universalism (the previous leading epistemological movements) demanded less of that. The debate continued in later articles by Proctor (1998b; 2002) that appeared in the same journal.

In 2002, an article by Cloke (2002) appeared that is now considered to be one of the most important works in this field. In it, Cloke argued that there is an inherent tension between writing about social justice and implementing it in practice. He blamed his fellow geographers for sitting behind their computers and writing about evil while doing little to combat it in practice and acting as bystanders. He appealed to the social duty of social scientists and asserted that they should at least contribute to a better world, have respect for others and act reflectively. He summed that up in four recommendations (Cloke, 2002, p. 602):

• being open to plurality, and problematizing what we take as given, necessary, ordinary or ordered, both within and without ourselves;
• refusing to reinscribe social rule, and assuming responsibility for trespasses by seeking to interrupt rather than repeat them;
• forgiving and releasing these trespasses, and promising to redirect how our effects bear upon the future;
• understanding the importance of invisible powers, and unleashing aspects of the spiritual which exceed governing forms of individual conscience and public reason.

In addition to the importance of interacting properly with your fellow students, lecturers and others you encounter during your degree programme, you will especially have to deal with ethics and integrity when you are faced with a choice of methods. The importance and prominence of ethics varies by type of research and assignment, and by the kind of ethical questions you encounter.

You will be faced with ethical questions in every phase of a research project. For example, there is already an ethical aspect to your choice of subject, themes and literary tools – why do you choose author A instead of author B? Why do you use this theory and not another? What do you do if it appears that your results and theory do not match? Why do you choose one case study instead of the other? What does that do to your results?

A key issue in ethics is transparency. You should be transparent with regard to the ideas you used (referencing sources), but also with regard to the operationalisation choices you make, possible conflicts of interest, your own positioning, how you recruit participants and your overall plan of action. There is no guide or blueprint for the one correct methodology for your research. Each research project, large or small, requires its own approach. It is therefore important to always formulate your choices and steps as transparently (but concisely) as possible. In this way, you contribute to the six principles of academic integrity: reliability, honesty, verifiability, impartiality, independence and responsibility (Scheepers, Tobi & Boeije, 2016, p. 24-28).

You also need to think about your dealings with people, places and results. As stated earlier in this chapter, geographers have to deal inherently with people-place or person-to-person relationships. If your research makes a lasting impact on recruited participants or interviewed respondents, you need to justify why you should do that. It is important that you take the ‘do no harm’ principle as a starting point. Do you leave an option open in your survey for people who prefer not to share their income or gender? Are you going to use photographs? And what about privacy? Do you honestly and fully show all the significant variables in multiple regressions? Also be transparent with your participants and respondents. Tell them what the purpose of the research is, why they should participate, who gains what from it and what will be done with their data/answers. Always guarantee that you will anonymise their data.

You have to realise that it is not just our opinion that it is important that you at the very least actively think about the above issues and justify your choices as far as possible. Various situations have emerged in the past in which unethical dealings have come to light later, such as the case of Diederik Stapel. We also need to conform to stricter rules and guidelines on an international level, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (privacy legislation) which aims to ensure the privacy of citizens. You must also take that into account in your research. Set up a data plan, for example. What do you do with your respondents’ data to ensure their privacy? How do you guarantee anonymity? Where do you store the data? What do you do with audio recordings of interviews? To ensure that you are acting in accordance with current trends, you must discuss this with your lecturer/supervisor.

For qualitative research, it is important that you think about how you recruit your participants, what you ask of them, which quotes/results you choose to discuss (and which not!), what you do with transcripts, what your role in the research is, and how it can affect you and the participants. You would do well to sign a social contract with the participants, for example in the form of a consent form. In it you can state that you will deal anonymously and carefully with the respondents’ data, and honestly with their answers. In any case, fully explain the justification for your choices in your methods chapter.

Quantitative research involves other issues, such as what you will or will not include in a survey, how you approach variables and which tests you use, what colours and shapes you use to present your data and what you do with your data set. The colours you use on a chorochromatic map can positively or negatively support your message (think of the difference in connotation between solid red and green, or the combination of black and yellow). In a chart you can decide which range to display and how – for example, only a few years or lengthwise – and thus create a positive image. Such acts have sometimes been noted in the business world in the presentation of annual figures (Beattie & Jones, 2010). The fictitious example below shows the same data, but the first and second renderings of it appear to describe different results.

Quantitative scientists may think that their role is smaller because of numbers and statistics, but that is not the case. Write out your choices and selections in the methods chapter.

In methodological and compulsory courses such as Areas in a Global Perspective, Academic Research Project, Qualitative Research Methods and Academic Training, you will receive a foundation and discuss various topics that fall within the main themes of ethics and integrity.

When writing your Bachelor’s thesis, you are expected to be aware of the different principles and put them into practice. Although there is no formal ethics committee for student research, we value compliance with the principles and codes of conduct. Talk to your supervisor about this when discussing the methodology together.

The Board of Examiners can be involved in suspicious cases, such as student plagiarism. To be sure that you have acted ethically and with integrity, you can consult the Academic Integrity Checklist.