Psych AAQ

Informed Consent

Informed consent is the process by which researchers working with human participants describe their research project and obtain the subjects' consent to participate in the research based on the subjects' understanding of the project's methods and goals. Most research projects require informed consent.

Protection from harm

Researchers must ensure that those taking part in research will not be caused distress. They must be protected from physical and mental harm. This means you must not embarrass, frighten, offend or harm participants.

right to withdraw

Individuals have the right to choose to participate or not. Also, an individual who initially agrees to participate in a study has the right to withdraw from the study at any point and the right to refuse to answer any particular question(s) or participate in a particular set of procedures.

confidentiality

Confidentiality is a part of the ethical guidelines of psychologists and means that information between a patient and a therapist cannot be shared with anyone. This applies to patients and any health professional, including doctors and nurses.

debriefing

“Debriefing” happens after the research and includes explaining the deception to the participant, responding to the participant about the use of deception, and obtaining true informed consent.

Deception

In psychology, the ethical guideline regarding deception states that researchers can only use deception in studies when it is absolutely necessary, justified by the study's scientific value, and when no other non-deceptive methods are available; participants must always be fully debriefed after the study to inform them of the deception and address any potential harm caused by it. 

Case Study

Case studies are in-depth investigations of a person, group, event, or community. It uses information from a range of sources, such as from the person concerned and also from their family and friends.

Correlational Studies

Correlation means association; it is a measure of the extent to which two variables are related. One of the variables can be regarded as the predictor variable with the other one as the outcome variable.

Questionnaire Method

Questionnaires can be thought of as a kind of written interview. They can be carried out face to face, by telephone, or post.

Observations

is where the researcher doesn’t tell the participants they are being observed until after the study is complete. There could be ethical problems or deception and consent with this particular observation method.

Meta-Analysis

Meta-analysis is a statistical procedure used to combine and synthesize findings from multiple independent studies to estimate the average effect size for a particular research question.

Longitudinal

Studies where researchers study certain people over long period of times

Cross sectional study

study where researchers study different age groups at the same time