Science Inquiry - ALL UNITS

ethics, formulating research, methodology, data collection, processing and analysing data, drawing conclusions, evaluation of research

ethical guidelines and practices for psych research

the role of the ethics committee

to review research proposals that plan to use human participants in order to make sure that they meet the guidelines in the Australian code of ethics.

will then decide whether there has already been completed research that nullifies the purpose of the current proposal, and whether the risk to participant welfare outweighs the benefits the research has to society.

finally, once approved, the ethics committee will monitor the research study and step in to stop the study if they think any guidelines are being breached.

name the 8 ethical guidelines

protection from harm (physical and psychological)

informed consent

withdrawal rights

deception

confidentiality

privacy/anonymity

voluntary participation

debriefing

protection from harm

researchers must protect the psychological and physical wellbeing of participants - *debrief can be used post research to achieve this

informed consent

researchers must obtain a written and signed informed consent from participants outlining the nature of the study - *under age or people who cannot sign for themselves must have a legal guardian do so; must include purpose, what they have to do, potential risks, length of time and the withdrawal rights of the study

withdrawal rights

participants can end their participation in a study, or have their results removed during or at the completion of the study without pressure or penalty.

deception

intentionally withholding or altering information to mislead participants to stop them from knowing the true purpose of the study if it is necessary to get valid results.

confidentiality

HOW the information from participants is safeguarded - *must be stored securely, and be disposed of when no longer needed; only researchers named in proposal can have access to information, and if the researcher publishes the participant must consent and not use their name (a number or letter instead)

privacy/anonymity

only relevant data to the study should be collected, WHAT data is collected

voluntary participation

participants should willingly agree to take part without feeling pressured or coerced, their choice and cannot be bribed if they do not participate.

debriefing

an explanation given to participants at the conclusion of the study -*if there was deception they must be made aware of it, and the participant right to remove their results from the study must be upheld.

3 R’s to animal use in research

replacement, reduction, refinement

replacement

is it possible for alternative methods to be used to eliminate the need for animals in the study

reduction

can more information be collected from the number of animals planned for research, or is there a way to find the information using fewer animals

refinement

what methods can be used to minimise potential distress or pain for the animals

formulating research

aim

the is written as a general statement explaining the purpose of research

4 types of variables

independent, dependent, controlled, extraneous

extraneous variable

any variable other than the IV that may affect the dependent variable, if identified can become controlled variables - *3 types: participant, environmental and experimenter

participant

related to the individual characteristics of participants e.g. motivation, educational background, self-esteem. can be minimised by selecting participants with similar characteristics or by using random allocation to make equal groups.

environment

environment the study takes place in and how that may influence participants responses e.g. background noise, room temp, time of day

researcher

personality characteristics, appearance, and conduct of the researcher unintentionally impacting the participant response. e.g. accent, gender, health, age.

confounding variable

variables that impact the dependent variable and also have a correlational relationship with the IV. this can complicate results making them difficult to interpret.

hypothesis must include:

population, IV, DV, directional or non-directional

inquiry question

open-ended question based on the aim that guides qualitative research e.g. will help seed oil decrease the time it takes to fall asleep?

experimental design

cause and effect, with a control group and experimental group

strengths: researchers can have control over variables, cause and effect relationship can be found

limitations: reduces realism and may impact participants behaviour, risk of human error occurring when trying to control variables.

non-experimental

cause and effect cannot be found, IV cannot be manipulated

strengths: observing what occurs means a controlled setting doesn’t have to be created, reduces unethical possibilities

limitations: reliable conclusions are not able to be made as there is no evidence of cause and effect, there is no variables so larger samples are required so more participants can be observed.

observational

strengths: controlled observations can be replicated, participants are more likely to act naturally

limitations: can lead to observer bias as researcher only sees what they expect to or records elected details, may change their behaviour if they become aware of being observed

case study

strengths: detailed information is collected, information is gathered from a range of perspectives

limitations: results are unable to be generalised to the population, conclusions drawn are limited due to lack of formal control groups

correlational

strengths: potential hypothesis based on correlation can be tested using an experimental design, can be used when manipulating variables in experimental research is unethical

limitations: do not show how they are related because there is no cause and effect, extraneous variables are not controlled and can intervene.

longitudinal

strengths: developmental trends can be studied over time, frequency of events can be assessed

limitations: takes longer time, participants may drop out along the way

cross-sectional

strengths: quicker than longitudinal, costs less to conduct than longitudinal

limitations: only a snapshot in time is chosen and results may differ if another time for collecting data was chosen, sample size may not be large enough to generalise results to the population

convenience sampling

strengths: time and effort to make sample is low, costs are low

limitations: often high level of researcher bias, unlikely to be representative of population

snowball sampling

strengths: time needed for researcher to gather a sample is reduced, allows access to group who are otherwise difficult to find e.g. homeless, drug users

limitations

random sampling

strengths: researcher bias is minimised, each participant has an equal chance of being selected

limitations: time and effort is high, unlikely to be representative of the population if the sample size isn’t large enough

stratified sampling

strengths: the sample is likely to be representative of the population, researcher bias is minimised

limitations: time and effort is high, may not always be able to classify participant into one subgroup/s

random allocation

strengths: allow for good generalisability, prevention of bias

limitations: it is not possible to use when the independent variable is not able to be manipulated, equality is not guaranteed amongst groups

placebo effect

used so researchers can eliminate the possibility that participants are improving, not because of the drug itself, but because of their expectation that that is what it will do.

experimenter effect

the expectations and behaviour of the researcher may bias the results. by giving consciously or unconsciously giving away the aim, influencing participants to behave accordingly. running a double blind procedure may help this so the experimenter and participant do not know what is expected to happen

demand characteristics