Ethics and Science Inquiry

• Ethical Guidelines


  codes of practice designed as a guide to people involved in psychological research.
• Protection from harm


  must protect physical and psychological wellbeing of participant
• Informed consent


  Necessity to obtain written consent from participants.
• Withdrawal rights


  whereby participants can end participation at any time with no pressure or penalty.
• Confidentiality 


  information collected from participants to be stored in a secure manner and disposed of when no longer needed.
• Difference between confidentiality and privacy

  Confidentiality: HOW information collected from participants is safeguarded

  Privacy: WHAT information is collected from participants
• Voluntary participation 


  participants joins an experiment because they chose to do so
• Deception


  lying to participants about the true nature of a study and their role in it.
• Debriefing 


  an explanation given to participants at the conclusion of the study
• Population


  entire group of people that is of interest to a researcher
• Sample


  a subsection of the population
• Sampling


  process of selecting participants from a population of research that will be used in a study.
• Convenience sampling


  participants who are easily accessible are selected.
• Strengths of convenience sampling


  Easy and doesn’t require a lot of time and effort with little cost needed.
• Limitations of convenience sampling

  High level of researcher bias due to subjectively selecting participants

  Unlikely to be representative of the population
• Snowball sampling


  Initial participants are chosen. Each participants encourages to contact researcher to join the sample.
• Strengths of snowball sampling

  allows research to access difficult recruit due to nature of the study e.g drug users. Less time is needed to gather sample
• Limitations of snowball effect

  unlikely to be representative of the population because researchers are minimally involved in the recruitment. Sample can be biased with direct contact from the original participants recruited.
• Random sampling


  Names are collected and randomly drawing them out by using hat or computer generated program e.g spinning wheel.
• Strengths of random sampling

  Researcher bias is minimised. Participants have an equal chance of being selected to be part of the sample.
• Limitations of random sampling

  Time and effort required. Sample is unlikely to be representative of population if sample size is not adequate.
• Stratified sampling


  Population broken down to sub-groups based on characteristic. Participants from each sub-group is randomly selected in the same proportion they appear in the population.
• Strength of stratified sampling

  likely to be representative of the population. researcher bias is minimised.
• Limitations of stratified sampling


  Time and effort required and researchers not able to classify each participants into a sub-group.
• Independent variable


  variable being manipulated by experimenter to observe the effect of the dependent variable.
• Dependent variable 


  variable being measured by experimenter
• Controlled variable


  variables that stayed consistent during the experiment
• Extraneous variable


  unwanted variables that may impact the dependent variable.
• Any extraneous variables that the researcher controls turns into controlled variable.
• Types of extraneous variables

  1. Participant variables,
  2. Environment variables
  3. Researcher variables
• Participant variables


  relating to individual characteristics of participants. making sure researchers select sample with similar characteristics e.g age, gender, motivation, intellegence
• Environment variables


  the environment the study takes place in. e.g testing venue, background noise and time of the day.
• Researcher variables


  relating to researcher’s personal characteristics and conduct that impacts participants response e.g the accent, attractiveness and age