COLLECTING SENSITIVE DATA IN BUSINESS ETHICS RESEARCH - A CASE FOR THE UNMATCHED COUNT TECHNIQUE (UCT)

Some would argue that the more promising areas of business ethics rese arch are ''sensitive.'' In such areas, it would be expected that subje cts, if inclined to respond at all, would be guarded in their response s, or respond inaccurately. We provide an introduction to an empirical approach - the unmatched block count (UCT) - for collecting these pot entially sensitive data which provides absolute anonymity and confiden tiality to subjects and ''legal immunity'' to the researcher. Interest ingly, under UCT protocol researchers could not divulge subjects' resp onses even if they were inclined to do so. Beyond that, UCTs provide c omplete disclosure to subjects and there is no deception.