What follows is meant as a summary or brief overview only of this topic area. It is essential that a combination of class exercises and/or texts are used with the notes to provide a fuller understanding of the issues covered. Easily the best way of learning research methods is a combination of reading followed by practise. Read a section, e.g. on levels of data and then practise what you’ve just learned by answering questions on the topic. Questions on the paper will require short response answers.

Government Health warning: The following information does contain sums and other material likely to cause offence to the squeamish. However, I’ll endeavour to keep the aforementioned to an absolute minimum and will, wherever possible avoid the gratuitous use of numbers!

Ethical issues in Psychological research

Ethics are the moral codes laid down by professional bodies to ensure that their members or representatives adhere to certain standards of behaviour. All scientific bodies have such codes but those in psychology are particularly important because of the subject matter of the topic.

1. Psychology is unlike most other subject areas in that its subject matter is entirely human or animal. Because of this practically all research involves living things that can be caused physical or psychological harm.

2. Psychological research also needs to consider the wider community. Milgram’s research taught us something unpleasant about the human race in general. Some research, for example studies on IQ, have been used to discriminate against different races or ethnic groups. It could be argued that Bowlby’s research was used to discriminate against women, making them feel guilty for not being at home caring for their children.

3. The knowledge gained from psychological research can be exploited by people or groups to gain an advantage over others. Skinner’s work on behaviour shaping could be abused in this way.

Protecting the individual in psychological research

Many of the ideas mentioned in this section will be raised as we cover other topics later in the year and particularly in the last topic on social influence.

Deception
Consent (informed or not)
Protection of participants from physical and psychological harm
The right to withdraw
The right to withdraw data
Confidentiality and Privacy

We shall then consider ways of determining whether or not studies should take place, and strategies for minimising risks if they do.

Mr Wallace with the ‘dicky ticker.’

Milgram’s procedure involved deception, lack of informed consent, physical and psychological harm, denied participants their confidentiality and right to withdraw (allegedly). However, a therapeutic debrief was provided and no ethical guidelines were broken since they didn’t exist at the time!

Did what we learn justify these methods?

Deception

Examples of studies involving deception: Asch, Milgram, Cruchfield

Deception involves either concealing the real intention of a study from participants or taking steps to mislead them at the outset. All of the examples above used the second ploy, deliberately lying to participants about the genuine reason for a study. Two of them also used stooges or confederates (people pretending to be participants who are really part of the experimental set up). The use of stooges always means deception has been used.

However, is deception necessary? The researchers above would all argue that their experiments could not have taken place without it. Imagine if Milgram had said at the start, ‘Mr Wallace is really a stooge, who will scream a bit but will receive no shocks.’ The study would have told us nothing of interest and obedience would doubtless have been close to 100%.

To a lesser extent nearly all studies involve an element of deception in that it generally isn’t a good idea to tell your participants what you are looking for in advance. Menges (1973) estimated that as few as 3% of studies involve no deception at all. When using the BEM sex role inventory to test gender, telling male participants in advance that you are trying to find how masculine or feminine they are will almost certainly influence the way they respond to the questionnaire!

Baumrind on the other hand argues that deception is always wrong since it prevents informed consent (see below), researchers have an obligation to protect their participants (see below) and psychologists should be seen as professional and therefore trustworthy.

Debriefing

It is really a matter of common courtesy to debrief your participants at the end of any procedure and inform them of the point of the research. Debriefing is crucial if any form of deception has been employed.

A proper debrief should:

1. Inform participants of the purpose of the research

2. Ensure that there are no negative or unforeseen consequences of the procedure

3. Ensure that the participant leaves in ‘a frame of mind that is at least as sound as when they entered.’ (Aronson 1988).

4. Give the participant the right to withdraw their data and to see the finished write-up of the report if they so wish.

As well as having the best interests of the participant in mind, debriefs can also be a useful source of additional information in an experiment. Participants may tell you things that you would otherwise not be aware of.

Therapeutic debriefing

In extreme cases such as Zimbardo’s study, participants may receive questionnaires, be asked to complete diaries and have follow up meetings with the experimental team. In the case of Milgram some participants also received follow up psychiatric visits!