Section 2: Ethical Issues
From Research Methods in Psychology
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[edit] What are you studying?
In this section we will consider ethical issues in psychological research - particularly the responsibilities that a researcher has with regard to the people who participate in their research. The overiver is based on the British Psychological Society Ethical Guidelines for Research with Human Participants.
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Crucial concept: ethics in psychological research is all about the moral duties of the psychologist. The main ethical responsibility of the researcher is to the people who take part in your research - the participants. However, a psychological researcher also has ethical responsibilities with respect to other researchers and to people in general. |
[edit] Responsibilities to Research Participants
You should never forget that the people who take part in your research are doing you a favour. You should obviously do everything you can to protect them from physical harm, but you should also look after their psychological welfare. You should certainly make sure that they do not end up feeling foolish or silly. You should try to take up as little of their time as possible. You should be certain to keep everything they tell you confidential. You should not deceive them unless it is necessary.
Sometimes you may wish to replicate psychological research that you have read about. Sometimes the research that you wish to replicate may have involved deception of participants, or putting participants under stress, or in difficult or uncomfortable situations. If this research that you read about was carried out relatively recently, it would have been carefully scrutinised to ensure that it minimised any potential psychological harm to participants; that the stress imposed on the participants was absolutely necessary; that the research was carried out properly; and that the findings of the research were worthwhile. When psychology students carry out research, they do so to learn how to carry out research. They do not carry out research to push forward the frontiers of science, and so the ethical criteria will be applied very strictly: you will not be justified as a student in carrying out deception or causing pain or stress.
You might have noticed that throughout this book that we usually use the word ‘participant’ rather than ‘subject’ for the people who take part in our research, although sometimes a term like ‘respondent’ is used to apply to people who, for example, fill in a questionnaire. We no longer use the term ‘subject’ because this term implies a passive individual, who is ‘experimented on’ by a more knowing psychological ‘experimenter.’ The term participant is considered a more accurate word to reflect the role of a person who participates in your research as a favour to you.
Both the British Psychological Society (2000) and the American Psychological Association (1994) recommend the use of the word participant.
[edit] Ethical Guidelines
Most countries have in place ethical guidelines for psychologists. The British Psychological Society (BPS) guidelines were most recently updated in January 2000, and are available from the BPS website (http://www.bps.org.uk). The guidelines cover many areas in which psychologists may be involved, and include psychological research with humans and research with animals and research in areas of professional practice such as clinical psychology or occupational psychology.
In the next section, we will look at the guidelines relating to human participants in psychological research.
[edit] Informed Consent
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Crucial Tip: participants give informed consent to take part in research when they fully understand the nature and purpose of the research. |
Participants should give their consent to take part in research. This consent should be informed consent - it is not good enough to ask participants ‘Will you take part in my study?’ You should inform them, as fully as possible, what the study entails, and why you are carrying it out. However, just because you have told them about the study does not mean that they understand. Participants should also be given the opportunity to ask questions about the study. It is especially important to inform them of anything that you suspect might influence their willingness to take part in the study.
[edit] Deception
Deception is a difficult issue in psychological research. Much psychological research relies on deception - if people are aware that some aspect of them is being studied, they may behave differently than they would if they were not aware that this aspect of them was being studied. Since the researcher is interested in ordinary behaviour, there is a temptation to deceive so that the participants will not be tempted to "bend" their behaviour. That said, no one likes to be lied to, and participants may be justifiably upset if it turns out that they were not told the truth about the study.
Deception comes in two flavours - omission and commission. Omission of information - not telling all - is usually easier to justify. Commission - that is deliberately saying something that you know to be untrue - is much more difficult to justify. The BPS guidelines state “Participants should never be deliberately misled without extremely strong scientific or medical justification.” As I have already stated, it is unlikely that your research project will be that important.
Often psychology students have the impression that participants should routinely be misled, or at least that they should not be informed of the true purpose of the study. However, such deception is often unnecessary and may do more harm than good. For example, if a student is carrying out a study on memory using an independent groups design (see Chapter 3) it can do very little harm to tell the participants that the study is looking at memory, and that another group of participants will be given slightly different materials to learn - you are interested in seeing which type of material leads to better retention. Despite the fact that truth telling will not have an obverse effect on the results, students tend to choose not to tell participants what the research is about. Participants who are not informed of the true nature of the research may become suspicious and wonder what the research really is about. Participants may even fail to try hard enough to learn the material - because they will think that you have some ulterior motive and they will be looking for it.
[edit] Debriefing
Debriefing is an important part of psychological research, and is often considered too lightly by students. In the debrief you should ensure that participants are informed of the true nature of the study and you should also ensure that you send them away at least as happy (happier would be better, of course) as when they started, and that all of their questions are answered. Simply saying something like, “Thanks. It was an experiment on memory” is not good enough. Sometimes students hand a piece of paper to the participant, which explains the nature of the study. This is also not good enough either.
To debrief your participants you should explain to each of them individually the nature of the study, and say why you did what you did. You should ensure that they understand what you told them, and you should give them the opportunity to ask any questions that they want answered. You should reassure them, if necessary, about any fears that they may have had. Some participants may be concerned that they performed badly, or that they did not come out as ‘normal.’ If you send them away with a piece of paper, you will never discover that they have these beliefs, and you will not be able to give the needed reassurance.
Debriefing should not be treated as a chore that has to be done because the rules say so: it can be a very useful part of the experimental process. Sometimes in the course of debriefing, your participants may explain to you that they did not understand some part of the experimental procedure, or they may point out some flaw in your design that you were not aware of. (By using a debrief in this way, you are emphasising the fact that the participants take part in the research process, and that they are not ‘subjects’ whom you ‘experiment on’.)
[edit] Withdrawal from the Investigation
At the start of the study, you should make sure that participants understand that they have the right not to take part in the experiment and have the right to withdraw at any point in the experiment. Participants can also withdraw retrospectively: after debriefing, they can ask that their data and any recordings be destroyed.
You must distinguish between simply telling people that they have a right to withdraw, and really giving people a right to withdraw. If you are testing your participants in a large group, there may be social pressure not to withdraw, particularly if they are forced to withdraw publicly. Saying ‘If anyone doesn’t want to take part, please put up your hand’ may look as if it is giving your participants a right to withdraw, but is it?
[edit] Confidentiality
Participants have a right to expect that any information that you collect on them is kept confidential. If you have sensitive data, you should ensure that participant’s names are not recorded next to the data. The usual way to do this is to keep a paper record of names, linked to code numbers. You can then separately keep a record of code numbers wit the original data.
[edit] Protection of Participants
This section of the guidelines seems to be straightforward - protect your participants from psychological and physical harm. In fact, you may need to think hard about what might cause psychological stress.
It is not good enough to assume that a procedure will probably not cause stress: you must consider the types of things that might cause stress for some people and should therefore be avoided. You cannot, of course, eliminate all risk of causing stress, but you should go to all possible lengths to minimise this risk.
For instance, you should consider how people of different backgrounds, viewpoints or religions might view the research procedure. Many procedures that we might think harmless can be quite distressing for some participants.
In a study of problem solving, you give participants a series of problems to solve, but some participants may find these problems to be very difficult, or become distressed that they are unable to solve the problems, when they feel that they should be able to. Participants may also be worried that they were unable to solve the problems, and have therefore somehow ‘failed’ you, or spoilt the study in some way. Your debrief needs to be sufficiently detailed to allay any fears that participants might have.
In a study of perceptions of taste you might blind-fold participants and give them a liquorice allsort to eat. Liquorice allsorts may contain gelatine (which is an animal product), which might offend vegetarians; milk, which people might be allergic to; and a mixture of meat product (gelatine) and milk product, which would be unacceptable to some Jewish people
If you are using any type of equipment, you have a responsibility to ensure that it is safe and working correctly - most electrical equipment in universities in the UK will be subjected to a Portable Appliance Test (PAT), which ensures that it is electrically safe.
[edit] Observational Research
In observational research, participants are often unaware that they are taking part as research participants. If the individuals have not given their consent, observational research should only take place in areas where the participants are in a public place and they would expect strangers to be able to observe them. If people are in a public place, but believe that they are in private and are not being observed, then observations should not take place.
[edit] Section Summary
In this section, we have considered the ethical responsibilities that psychological researchers have towards their participants. The guidance is based on the British Psychological Society ethical guidelines for research with human participants, and covers seven areas:
- Participants must give informed consent to take part in the research.
- Participants must not be deceived.
- Participants must be fully debriefed.
- Participants must have, and understand that they have, a right to withdraw at any time from the research.
- Participants must be protected from physical or psychological harm.
- Special consideration must be given to protection of privacy of participants during observational research
