Ethics

• What are ethical guidelines?


  These are produced by the British Psychological Association in order to deal with ethical dilemmas.
• What the key factors in an ethical experiment?

  1. Deception
  2. Right to withdraw
  3. Informed consent
  4. Protection from harm
  5. Privacy
• What is deception?


  The purposeful misleading of participants for the integrity of the experiment, something that is sometimes required and can be solved through the use of debriefing post experiment.
• What is the right to withdrawal?


  Participants should be made aware of their right to stop and withdrawal from the beginning, and should be given contact details so they are able to post experiment also, with all data erased.
• What is informed consent?


  A signed form that includes what participants should expect, risks, implications, the participants right to be discontinued if chosen, and guarantee of confidentiality.
• What is protection from harm?


  The researcher should not put participants in risk of physical or mental harm, risks no greater than those experienced in everyday life, and they should be offered counselling post experiment.
• What is privacy?

  Participants must be kept anonymous with no personal details included that would allow identification, any personal data collected must be stored securely and destroyed when no longer needed (data protection act of 2018). They must also be informed that they are not required to answer personal questions and that if they do their answers will remain confidential.
• When is informed consent not required?


  If what happens to a participant could just as likely happen to them in everyday life, eg. an observational experiment of individuals in a naturalistic environment.
• What is the issue with informed consent?


  There is a possibility that the researcher could give something away and influence participant behaviour; in this case a case can be made for withholding information, eg. Milgram (1963) telling his participants that the study was about obedience would have corrupted the experiment.
• What is Sieber and Stanley's (1988) definition of socially sensitive research?


  Research that has potential social consequences for the participants or the groups of people represented by the research.
• What is Menges (1973) study?


  A meta analysis of 1,000 studies published in the American Psychological Association journals, looking into the amount of participants who are deceived in psychological research.
• What were Menges findings?

  -20% of studies involved giving participants false or misleading information, and so didn't involve informed consent.

  -Less than 50% had been debriefed, with very few being volunteer participants (40% students volunteering for credit).

  -Around 3% of studies involved no deception.
• What concludes of Menges study?

  He argued that his research highlights a need for new ethical guidelines with both openness and honesty; this has lead to increased awareness of ethics and changes in guidelines.