|
Name _________________________ Worked with
___________________________________
Applying Research Methods (PSYC409)
Ethical Issues in Research
The following
research examples do not completely conform to the APA guidelines for
the ethical treatment of human participants. The principles are subject
to some interpretation. When planning research, investigators should
seek the opinions of other scholars and their institutional review
board.
With a small group
of classmates, discuss the research cases. Cite the guidelines that are
violated – use the concepts violated, e.g., informed consent was
inadequate, as well as the relevant APA principle number (8.02). In some
cases, there may be more than one problem. Could the research be
re-designed to insure ethical treatment of human subjects? Is so,
suggest an ethical re-design. APA guidelines are on-line
http://www.apa.org/ethics
Case 1 Meditation
A researcher placed
advertisements in the newspaper asking subjects to participate in a
study on meditation. Subjects were to be compensated for their
participation by receiving meditation training. Without their knowledge
subjects were randomly assigned to either the control or experimental
group. Subjects in the experimental group received actual meditation
training; subjects in the control group practiced various coordination
tasks (not meditation training). The researcher wanted to test the
effectiveness of meditation in reducing anxiety and felt that the
validity of the research would be jeopardized if the control subjects
knew they were not receiving meditation training.
Guidelines that
were violated:
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ethical re-design :
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Case 2 Gender
Role Orientation
Deception was
employed in a study assessing the relationship between gender-role
orientation and self-esteem. Research subjects, prior to participation,
were informed of the requirements and purpose of the experiment to the
extent possible given the deception component. Freedom to withdraw from
the study, at any time, was emphasized. Following an assessment of
gender-role orientation, all female subjects, irrespective of their
actual performance, were told their scores revealed a masculine
orientation, and male subjects were informed their scores reflected a
feminine orientation. Measures of self-esteem were then administered.
Immediately on completion, subjects were thanked for their participation
and promised a detailed report of the study. Two months later subjects
received the report, which fully describe the deception. (Agnew & Pyke)
Guidelines that
were violated:
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ethical re-design :
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Case 3 Arousal
and Memory
Part of the course
requirement for an introductory psychology course is participation as a
subject in an experiment. Professor W. J. is using some of the students
for her research on the effects of high arousal (induced by applying
shocks to the fingers) on memory. One student, when informed of the
nature of the research, was reluctant to serve as a subject. The
experimenter waved aside objections by reminding the student that
participation was a course requirement. (Agnew & Pyke)
Guidelines that
were violated:
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ethical re-design :
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Case 4 Invasions of
Personal Space
Middlemist,
Knowles, and Matter (1976) conducted a study investigating whether or
not invasions of personal space are physiologically as well as
psychologically arousing. The experiment was run in a men’s lavatory.
By closing off one or another urinal, participants were forced to
urinate either in the urinal next to a male confederate of the
experimenter or in the urinal one away from the confederate. A second
confederate was positioned (so to speak) in a toilet stall adjacent to
the urinals. Using a periscope the second confederate observed the
urination behavior of the participants. The observer recorded the
latency to onset of urination and duration. (Bordens & Abbott)
Guidelines that
were violated:
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ethical re-design :
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Case 5 Jury
Members
At a
meeting of lawyers, a social psychologist was asked to present the
results of her recent research on the decision-making process of
juries. In one of her studies, she interviewed each member of a jury
involved in a celebrated murder trial. In the study, the identity of
each member of the jury was carefully concealed, but she did discuss the
deliberative processes of subgroups. For example, the jury had among
its members, seven women, two African Americans, one foreign-born
Italian American, an architect, and a truck driver, and the researcher
referred to the voting and deliberative patterns of these groups. When
questioned about the ethical propriety of revealing the findings, she
said the names of the jurors had not been used and the jurors were now
public figures whose opinions were no longer private. (Solso, et al.)
Guidelines that
were violated:
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ethical re-design :
___________________________________________________________________
Case 6
Eyewitness
The
identification of criminal offenders by eyewitnesses is considered an
important social and psychological issue. To study it, a researcher
decided to stage a crime in the presence of eyewitness and then ask them
for a description of the perpetrator. The experiment was conducted in a
fast-food outlet, and all employees carefully rehearsed the staged
crime. The crime was committed by an actor who entered the store,
displayed an unloaded handgun, and demanded all the money from the cash
register. He told the employees not to call the police, and in making
his getaway, shouted, “The first one out the door is going to get blown
away.” Immediately after the thief left, the researcher and his
associates entered the store with a questionnaire, which they
distributed to the patrons. The questions dealt with the physical
appearance of the thief, whether or not the person had a weapon, and
what he or she said. Then each patron was presented with a series of
photographs and asked to identify the thief.
Each
patron was thoroughly debriefed after the questionnaire was complete,
and the important social and psychological issues were discussed. An
opportunity was provided for further debriefing after the questionnaire
was completed, and the important social and psychological issues were
discussed. An opportunity was provided for further debriefing and
counseling, but no subject indicated a need for further intervention.
(Solso, et al.)
Guidelines that
were violated:
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ethical re-design :
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Case 7
Children's self-esteem
To study
self-esteem in children, you plan to have 8-years-olds draw pictures of
themselves
and their friends and to answer some questions. You plan to ask a
teacher
friend of
yours to let you test some of her students. (Sieber)
Guidelines that
were violated:
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ethical re-design :
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Sources:
Agnew, N. M., &
Pyke, S.W. (1994). The science game: An introduction to research in
the social sciences (6th ed.).
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Bordens, K.S., &
Abbott, B.B. (1996). Research design and methods: A process
approach (3rd ed). Mountain View,
CA.: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Sieber, J.E.
(1990). Three exercises on the ethics of research on humans. In V.P.
Makosky, C.C. Sileo, L.G. Whittemore,
C.P. Landry, M.L. Skutley (Eds.), Activities handbook for the
teaching of psychology, (Vol. 3). Washington, D.C.:
American Psychological Association.
Solso, R.L.,
Johnson, H.H., & Beal, M.K. (1998). Experimental psychology: A case
approach (6th ed.). New York,
Addison Wesley Longman.
|