ethics

• What are ethics?

  What you can and can't do with participants.
• What is an ethics committee? What do they do?

  They determine ethical standards, psychologists must justify their proposed research to an ethics committee before they can carry out their study.
• Issue one: consent.

  Participants should give informed consent (parental consent for child participants), usually through signing a form.
• Issue two: deception.

  Not telling participants the true purpose of the study, should be a strong justification for deception of participants.
• Issue three: debriefing.

  The experiment should be explained at the end, researchers contact details should also be given to participants in case they want to ask further questions.
• Issue four: right to withdraw.

  Participants should have the right to withdraw from the experiment at any time.
• Issue five: confidentiality.

  Participants details remain confidential, if it cannot be guaranteed then participants need to be informed of this.
• Issue six: protection from harm.

  Participants should be protected from both physical and mental harm, risk factors should be checked (medical conditions etc). Risk should be no more than could be expected in day to day life, opportunity to contact researchers should be given at a later date if distress occurs.
• What is cost-benefit analysis?

  If you are going to deceive participants, it is important that the ends justify the means. The research must be important and the results should benefit society in some way. An ethical committee will usually decide this.
• How can we deal with issues of consent?

  Presumptive consent: The researcher asks people from a similar population as the sample if they think that the study is acceptable. If they do, then it can go ahead.
• How do we deal with issues of consent?

  Prior general consent: People who might be used as participants are told that sometimes participants are misinformed about the true purpose of a study. Only those that agree this is acceptable would be selected as participants for this type of study. (Consent is before and not specific).
• How can we deal with issues of deception?

  Debriefing: If psychologists are to deceive participants, then it is essential to debrief in order to ensure that participants have no lasting psychological trauma. Milgram did this extensively for his participants.
• How can we deal with issues of deception?

  Right to withdraw: Participants must be told they have the right to withdraw at any time. They should be given contact details for the experimenters so that if they change their mind in the future, their data can be destroyed.
• How else can we protect our participants?

  Anticipating and stopping the study: If a researcher suspects emotional or physical harm is being put onto the participants then they must stop the experiment immediately.
• How else can we protect our participants?

  Debriefing: If participants have been subjected to any kind of harm then it is essential that psychologists refer participants to any clinical psychologist or doctors if further assistance is required for the participant.
• How else can we get information from our participants?

  Questionnaires: This is a possible alternative when studying a sensitive topic. In experiments, participants may feel they cannot withdraw, whereas they can miss out questions they do no want to answer in questionnaires.