This is a very important point. The unfortunate reality is that academic research is not done in isolation from private sector "consumer research" when it comes to potential respondents. As far as I understand, private corporations don't have human subjects guidelines to abide by like academics do.
Ah, but Google claims otherwise ... APRM-PMRS Rules of Conduct http://www.pmrs-aprm.com/What/RulesA01.html? MRA: Code of Data Collection Standards http://www.mra-net.org/docs/industry/code_dcs.cfm MRS: Professional Standards http://www.mrs.org.uk/code.htm MRSA: Code of Professional Behaviour http://www.mrsa.com.au/index.cfm?a=detail&id=115&eid=13 ... and so forth. I make it a point to read the magazine produced by a (perhaps the) professional marketing research association here in Canada (APRM-PMRS), and the telemarketing-tragedy-in-the-commons issue is very much a hot topic there, where a sense that bad data collection drives out good has very much been internalized. Generally, I think that the divide posited between academics and private corporations is less germane than the one between disciplines. Marketing researchers in academia and the private sector work fairly closely together, but they and their counterparts in sociology and demographics, statistics, psychology, and other similarly-interested disciplines don't appear -- that is, from my limited vantage point -- to chat as often as might be in their interests on such matters. I wonder whether an organisation like AOIR mightn't be well-placed to help open that conversation up, given the absence of any given discipline's monopoly (well, one hopes) over so-called "Internet studies". In which case, academic research's lack of isolation from private-sector work might helpfully be regarded less as unfortunate, than as a fortunate point from which to build a baseline set of guidelines ... atop which any disciplinary or organisational entities should, it goes without saying, feel quite justified in wishing to layer their own sets of rules. cheers Bram