Ethics Quiz

• The branch of philosophy that is concerned with morality.

• It can also refer to a set of principles and practices that provide moral guidance in a particular field.

What is ‘ethics’?

• Someone who pretends to be a participant but is really working for the researcher.

• They know more than regular participants and can help the researcher.

What are ‘confederates’?

People’s right to make their own choices and take their own actions free from coercion. Researchers need to respect participants’ autonomy.

What is ‘autonomy’?

Researchers obtain and document people’s agreement to participate in a study after having informed them of everything that might reasonably be expected to affect their decision.

What is ‘informed consent’?

The right to decide what information about oneself is shared with others. Researchers need to respect this by maintaining confidentiality.

What is ‘privacy’?

An agreement not to disclose participants’ personal information without their consent or some appropriate legal authorization.

What is ‘confidentiality’?

• Written in 1947, one of the earliest ethics codes. A set of 10 principles written in conjunction with the (Nuremberg) trials of Nazi physician accused of shockingly cruel research on concentration camp prisoners.

• Emphasis was placed on carefully weighing risks against benefits.

What is the ‘Nuremberg code’?

Created in 1964 by the World Medical Council. Added to the Nuremberg code the standard that research on human participants should be based on a written protocol.

What is the ‘declaration of Helsinki’?

A detailed description of the research that is reviewed by an independent committee.

What is ‘protocol’?

A set of federal guidelines published in 1978 as a reaction to the disastrous Tuskegee study and other cases. The Belmont report explicitly recognized the principle of seeking justice, including the importance of conducting research in a way that distributes risks and benefits fairly across different groups at a societal level.

What is the ‘Belmont Report’?

A set of laws based on the Belmont report that apply to research conducted, supported, or regulated by the federal government. An extremely important part of these regulations is that universities, hospitals, and other institutions that receive support from the federal government must establish an institutional review board.

What is the ‘Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects’?

• A committee that is responsible for reviewing research protocols for potential ethical problems.

• An IRB (Institutional Review Board, such as the REB in Canada) must consist of at least five people with varying backgrounds, including members of different professions, scientists and non-scientists, men and women, and at least one person not otherwise affiliated with the institution.

• The REB helps to make sure that the risks of the proposed research are minimized, the benefits outweigh the risks, the research is carried out in a fair manner, and the informed consent procedure is adequate.

What is the Research Ethics Board, or (REB)?

Lowest level of risk according to federal regulations. This type of research includes research on the effectiveness of normal educational activities, the use of standard psychological measures and surveys of a non-sensitive nature that are administered in a way that maintains confidentiality, and research using existing data from public sources. It is called exempt because the regulations don’t apply to it.

What is ‘exempt research’?

Research that exposes participants to risks that are no greater than those encountered by healthy people in daily life or during routine physical or psychological examinations. Minimal risk research can receive an expedited review by one member of the IRB or by a separate committee under the authority of the IRB that can only approve minimal risk research.

Think: weighing risks vs potential benefits. Is the risk worth the reward?

What is ‘minimal risk research’?

Research that poses greater than minimal risk and must be reviewed by the IRB/REB.

What is ‘at-risk research’?

The APA’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (also known as the APA Ethics Code) was first published in 1953 and has been revised several times since then, most recently in 2002. It includes about 150 specific ethical standards that psychologists and their students are expected to follow.

What is the APA code of ethics?

• Although the process of obtaining informed consent often involves having participants read and sign a consent form, it is important to understand that this is not all it is.

• Although having participants read and sign a consent form might be enough when they are competent adults with the necessary ability and motivation, many participants do not actually read consent forms or read them but do not understand them. For example, participants often mistake consent forms for legal documents and mistakenly believe that by signing them they give up their right to sue the researcher (Mann, 1994). Even with competent adults, therefore, it is good practice to tell participants about the risks and benefits, demonstrate the procedure, ask them if they have questions, and remind them of their right to withdraw at any time—in addition to having them read and sign a consent form.

What is a ‘consent form’?

• Deception of participants in psychological research can take a variety of forms: misinforming participants about the purpose of a study, using confederates, using phony equipment like Milgram’s shock generator, and presenting participants with false feedback about their performance (e.g., telling them they did poorly on a test when they actually did well).

• Deception also includes not informing participants of the full design or true purpose of the research even if they are not actively misinformed.

What is ‘deception’?

This is the process of informing research participants as soon as possible of the purpose of the study, revealing any deception, and correcting any other misconceptions they might have as a result of participating. Debriefing also involves minimizing harm that might have occurred.

What is ‘debriefing’?

• A second way to minimize risks is to use a prescreening procedure to identify and eliminate participants who are at high risk. You can do this in part through the informed consent process. For example, you can warn participants that a survey includes questions about their fear of crime and remind them that they are free to withdraw if they think this might upset them.

• Prescreening can also involve collecting data to identify and eliminate participants. For example, Burger used an extensive prescreening procedure involving multiple questionnaires and an interview with a clinical psychologist to identify and eliminate participants with physical or psychological problems that put them at high risk.

What is a ‘pre-screening’?