Quiz 1 Flashcards
(34 cards)
Origins of the Nuremberg Code
Following World War II, the Nuremberg Trials revealed the horror of medical experiments conducted on concentration camp victims in Nazi-occupied Europe and resulted in the Nuremberg Code
What has to be included in an informed consent document? What can be excluded?
- purpose of research, expected duration, and procedures
- which parts of the data are confidential and which are not
When do you not need to obtain informed consent?
- when participants answer a completely anonymous questionnaire in which their answers are not linked to their names in any way
- informed consent might not be deemed necessary when a study takes place in a public place where people can reasonably expect to be observed
Responsibilities of the Institutional Review Board (IRB)
-interpreting ethical principles and ensuring that research using human participants is
conducted ethically
-balancing the welfare of research participants and the researchers’ goal of contributing important knowledge to the field
Goals and principles set by the Belmont Report
- to guide ethical decision making by three sets of principles:
- respect for persons: participants should be free to choose whether or not to participate and people who cannot consent need protection -beneficence: researchers must carefully assess the risks and benefits involved
- justice: make sure the types of individuals who benefit are not different from those who take the risk
What is coercion in research and how can it be avoided?
- Coercion is an implicit or explicit suggestion that those who do not participate will suffer a negative consequence; for example, a professor implying that students’ grades will be lower if they don’t participate in a particular study.
- to avoid it, researchers should avoid directly approaching or soliciting employees, students or staff in their own classes and departments
Difference between confidential and anonymous data?
- confidential data is usually in encrypted form or people’s named are stored separately from their data
- anonymous data does not involve collection of any potentially identifying information, including names, birthdays, photos, and so on.
Types of deception
- omission is withholding details about the study from participants
- commission is actively lying to participants about details of the study
Why is it a problem to falsify data (change or delete)?
- because scientists can’t use the data to test their theories
- it can mislead others about the state of support for a theory
What are the factors we need to balance when deciding to conduct a study?
The two issues that need to be balanced in conducting ethical research is assessing the degree of risk to the participants and the value of knowledge gained
Deception and the process of debriefing
- deception is withholding or lying about details of the study from participants
- debriefing is informing the participants about the study’s hypotheses and/or any nature of deception
What is an operational definition and why/how do we use them?
- a clear, concise definition of a measure
- to turn a concept of interest into a measured or manipulated variable
Self-Report
- operationalizes a variable by recording people’s answers to questions about themselves in a questionnaire or interview
- ask participants direct questions to study behavior
Observational
-operationalizes a variable by recording observable behaviors or physical traces of behaviors.
Physiological
operationalizes a variable by recording biological data, such as brain activity, hormone levels, or heart rate.
Nominal
- differences in the variable measured that are not quantitative
- ex. college major
- does not indicate direction or magnitude of relationship
Ordinal
- Represents differences in a series of ranks
- ex. rankings (first, second, third) or sizes (small, medium, or large)
Split-Half
- splits the test in half and computes a separate score for each half
- calculates degree of consistency between the two scores for a group of participants
Test-Retest
- measure of reliability obtained by administering the same test twice over a period of time to a group of individuals
- compares scores of two successive measurements of same individuals and correlates the scores
- You want multiple tests to be the same (ex. If you gave anxiety test before and after an exercise, scores might be different before and after if participants are eating lunch in between or doing something else)
Inter-Rater
the extent to which two or more observers agree and simultaneously record measurements of the behaviors
How can we determine each? How can scatter plots help?
-scatterplots can be helpful tools for visualizing the agreement between two administrations of the same measurement (test-retest reliability) or between two coders (interrupter reliability)
Interval and Ratio
- Categories are organized sequentially, and all categories are the same size
ex. inches on ruler, time in sec, weight, temp. in degrees fahrenheit - Interval scale has arbitrary zero point and value of 0 is assigned as a reference point
- Ratio scale has a true zero value and 0 represents none or a complete absence of category members
Goals, methods, and ethical problems with the Tuskegee study
-goal was to study the effects of untreated syphilis on the men’s health over the long term and obtain valuable data on how the disease progresses when untreated
-methods: men were recruited in their community churches and schools. researchers followed infected men with syphilis until each one had died. all men were required to come to the Tuskegee clinic for evaluation and testing.
-ethical problems: first, the men were not treated respectfully or protected. The researchers lied to them about the nature of their participation and withheld information (such as penicillin as a cure for the disease); they did not give the men a chance to make a fully informed decision about participating in the study.
second, men in the study were harmed. They and their families were not told about a treatment for a disease that, in the later years of the study, could be easily cured. also subjected to painful and dangerous tests.
third, researchers targeted a disadvantaged social group in this study.
Goals, methods, and ethical problems with the Milgram experiment
- goal: to study about obedience to authority
- method: there are two participants: one is a teacher and another the learner. teacher punishes the learner when he makes mistakes in a learning task by electrically shocking them. the more mistakes they make, the higher the voltage is increased and the learner begins to scream with pain. when they scream they want to quit the experiment, the experimenters tell the teacher they must continue and have no choice. the teachers’ obedience levels were measured. however, the learner was actually a paid actor and did not actually receive any shocks.
- ethical problems: extremely psychologically stressful to the teacher-participants; the debriefing never mentioned that the learner did not receive shocks
