Expsych

• Well-being of the individual research participant

  No less important than the search for knowledge
• Researcher


  Legally responsible for what happens to research participants
• Primary duty of a review board

  Ensure that the safety of research participants is adequately protected
• Informed consent


  The subject agrees to participate after having been fully informed about the nature of the study
• Informed consent


  • Individuals must give their consent freely, without the use of force, duress coercion
  • They must be free to drop out of the experiment at any time
  • Researchers must give subjects a full explanation of the procedures to be followed and offer to answer any questions about them
  • Researchers must clear the potential risks and benefits of the experiment
  • Researchers must provide assurances that all data will remain private and confidential
• APA Guidelines


  • In planning a study the investigator has the personal responsibility to make careful evaluation of its ethical acceptability
  • Responsibility for the establishment and maintenance of acceptable ethical practice in research always remains with the individual investigator
  • Ethical practice requires the investigator to inform the participant of all features of the research that reasonably might be expected to influence willingness to participate
  • Openness and honesty are essential characteristics of the relationship between investigator and research participant
  • Ethical research practice requires the investigator to respect the individual's freedom to decline to participate in research or to discontinue participation at any time
  • Ethically acceptable research begins with the establishment of a clear and fair agreement between the investigator and the research participant
  • The ethical investigator protects participants from the physical and mental discomfort, harm and danger
  • After the data are collected, ethical practice requires the investigator to provide the participant with a full clarification of the nature of the study and to remove any misconceptions that may have arisen
  • Where research procedures may result in undesirable consequences for the participant, the investigator has the responsibility to detect and remove or correct these consequences
  • Information obtained about the research participant during the course of the investigation is confidential
• Deception


  Sometimes a small omission, or outright deception, is necessary to make an appropriate test of the experimental hypothesis
• Deception


  • Deception must not influence a subject's decision to take part in the research
  • Any deception that is used must be such that subjects would not refuse to participate if they knew what was really happening
  • Researchers adhered to the principle of full disclosure by completely debriefing subjects at the end of the experiment
• Anonymity and Disclosure


  • The researcher has the responsibility to protect subjects' privacy
  • Data collected are confidential and may not be used for any purpose not explained to the subject
  • Fictitious names or code numbers should be used and identifying details should be disguised if there is a chance that a subject will be identifiable
• Protecting the Welfare of Animal Subjects

  • The experimenter is responsible for providing adequate care
  • Psychologists trained in research methods and experienced in the care of laboratory animals supervise all procedures involving animals
  • Psychologists make reasonable efforts to minimize discomfort, infection, illness, and pain of animal subjects
  • When it is appropriate that the animal's life be terminated, psychologists proceed rapidly, with an effort to minimize pain, and in accordance with accepted procedures
• Fraud in Science


  Data falsification is a breach of the ethical principle stated "Psychologists do not fabricate data"
• Safeguards against fraud


  • Research articles submitted for publication are reviewed by the editor and experts before acceptance
  • Replication is the second line of defense against fraud
• Plagiarism


  Means to represent someone else's ideas, words, or written work as your own
• Tips to Avoid Plagiarism


  1. Take complete notes with full citations

  2. Identify the source of any ideas, words, or information that are not your own

  3. Identify direct quotes with quotation marks and include the page number

  4. Be careful with paraphrasing

  5. Include a complete list of references at the end
• Population


  Consists of all people, animals or objects that have at least one characteristic in common
• Sample


  A part of something assumed to be representative of the whole
• Selecting a Sample


  • Different samples may produce very different data
  • Samples must be selected at random to be representative
  • Samples are used to make inferences about the population
  • Too small a sample can lead to erroneous results
  • Practical considerations affect the total number of subjects to be used
  • At least 10 subjects per treatment group is advisable
  • Large samples are often preferred
• Random Selection


  All individuals in the population have an equal chance of being selected
• Risks of using friends as subjects

  • It can dissolve a friendship
  • Friends may not be naive about the purpose of the experiment
  • Friends may be sensitive to subtle cues and feel obliged to participate
• Reporting Procedures


  • The report must give enough information to enable replication
  • Details of the type of subjects and selection process are important
  • Recruitment procedures must be explained so the experiment is interpretable and replicable
  • Any details that might have influenced the type of test subjects must be included
  • Any limitations on who could participate must be noted
  • Subject mortality should also be reported
• Between-Subjects Design


  An experimental design that divides the participants into two or more groups and each group is assigned a treatment condition
• Between-Subjects Design


  • Compares different groups of individuals
  • Produces independent scores, with only one score per participant
  • Also called Independent-measures experimental Design
  • Disadvantages include requiring a large number of participants, individual differences, participant mortality, and communication between groups
• Two-Group Designs


  1. At least two treatment conditions are needed

  2. Random assignment ensures every subject has an equal chance of being placed in any condition

  3. Random assignment is critical to internal validity
• Two Independent Groups Design

  • Experimental Group vs Control Group
  • Two-Experimental Groups Design to look at differences between two levels of the independent variable
• Two-Matched-Groups Design


  • Subjects are matched on an extraneous variable thought to be highly related to the dependent variable
  • Matching can be done before or after the experiment
• How to Match Subjects

  1. Precision Matching: Pairing subjects with identical scores

  2. Range Matching: Pairing subjects within a certain score range

  3. Statistical Matching: Matching on the basis of statistical analyses
• Matching


  Measuring subjects on the extraneous variable that will be used for the matching
• When it is not possible to form pairs of subjects that are identical on the matching variable, the researcher must decide how much of a discrepancy will be tolerated
• A difference of 0.8 grams might be acceptable, but a difference of 2 grams might not
• Assigning subjects to treatment conditions

  Randomly assign one member of each pair to a treatment condition, then the remaining member in the other condition
• In some experiments, it might not be feasible to do the matching beforehand
• Assigning subjects when matching is not feasible

  Make the initial assignment to conditions at random and run the experiment with two randomly assigned groups of subjects that might or might not be comparable on our matching variable
• Ways to match subjects

  • Precision Matching: Pairing subjects with identical scores
  • Range Matching: Pairing subjects within a specified range of scores
  • Rank-Ordered Matching: Pairing subjects based on their rank order of scores without a specific score range
• Multiple-independent-groups design


  The most commonly used multiple-groups design in which the subjects are assigned to the different treatment conditions at random
• Assigning equal number of subjects to all treatment conditions

  Use a sophisticated procedure called block randomization
• As a general rule: Select the simplest design that will make an adequate test of your hypothesis
• Uses pilot study: to pretest selected levels of an independent variable before conducting the actual experiment
• Within-subject design


  A design in which each subject takes part in more than one condition of the experiment
• Power


  The chance of detecting a genuine effect of the independent variable
• Within-subjects factorial design


  A type of experimental design used to investigate the effects of two or more independent variables on a dependent variable. In this design, each participant is exposed to all levels of each independent variable