Test 2 Chapter 3 Flashcards
Milligram’s experiment
The “study”
•Advertised as a study of memory and learning (examining the effects of punishment and learning)
•Introduced participant to Mr.Wallace (a confederate) who would ‘draw’ the learner role and participant would be teacher
•Mr. W was attached to shock machine up to 450 volts (labelled), and was asked to learn a series of word pairs where each time he was wrong, would receive a shock
•Teacher was told they could quit, but were urged to continue through verbal pods stressing the importance of the study
The real study
•Whether participants would continue to obey the experimenter/give shocks
•Findings: 65% of participants continued till 450 volts (long after unresponsive)
•Significance: challenges beliefs about ability to resist authority
•ex: holocaust, many people in western society obey legitimate authority
Ethical research in Canada
Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans
•Tri-Council: common way to refer to the three federally funded research granting agencies
1) Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
2) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
3) Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
TCPS History
1998: first statement published, becoming the first standard Canadian ethics code to guide human research
2010: first major revisions
All institutions that recieve funding from the Tri-Council must have a research ethics bored (REB) to review each study/ensure it follows TCPS guidelines
Core principles of Canada’s TCPS
1) Consistent with earlier American’s
“The Belmont Report”: defined principles that have guided more detailed regulations in the American Psychological Association
2) Follow TCPS guidelines (not laws because of varying legal contexts)
3) Follow Canadian privacy laws, relevant provincial laws, and Canadian charter of rights and freedoms
Core ethical principles for guiding research with human participants
1) Respect for persons
•choosing participation freely and without interference: researchers must respect autonomy and protect those who’s is “developing, impaired, or diminished”
2) Concern for welfare
•must attempt to minimize risks and maximize benefits to participants in the study and society
3) Justice
•treat people fairly by distributing the benefits and burdens in participating, and having recruitment methods offering participation to a diverse range of social groups
Designing research to uphold core ethical principles: concern for welfare
1) Risk benefit analysis: calculating potential risks and benefits that are likely to result in a study
•possible benefits: education about scientific process, treatment for a psychological problem, payments/gifts/HSP
•possible risks: physical harm (alcohol, lack of sleep), psychological stress (Milgram), potentially long term psychological impacts (can be prevented by debriefing), risk of losing privacy and confidentiality
2) Privacy and coding data
•Confidentiality: information is kept secret and only used for the purpose promised by the researcher
*especially important when studying: sex, divorce, family violence, drug abuse
•To keep data confidential, researcher should have codes to identify participants that are kept separate from their data
•Anonymous: many cases, no way to connect person to data (not asking for personal information)
*not really possible in online or personal interviews, or longitudinal data
Patriot Act (US): allows gov. access to records of internet servers (risking confidentiality of Canadian participants) so REB may require online work with Canadian companies
Designing research to uphold core ethical principles: respect for persons
1) Informed consent
•potential participants should be provided all information that may influence their decision to participate in the study
Consent form: provides needed information and participants signature
*includes: study’s purpose, risk and benefits, procedure/time requirements, compensations, confidentiality, researcher contact info and their rights to refuse/terminate participation
•written 1st person (conversational, clear)
•informed consent is NOT needed when: measuring naturally occurring events (how many males vs females at IKB)
2) Autonomy
•minors, patients in psychiatric hospitals, and adults with cognitive impairments
•assent: someone contents for you (parent)
•coercion: any procedure that limits an individual’s freedom to consent
•ex: boss asking employees to fill out a survey during a staff meeting, offering a poor person $100 to participate
3) Withholding information
•Researchers can withhold: hypothesis, the condition someone is in, and will usually be provided during debriefing
Deception
When researchers actively misinterpret information to participants
ex: Milgram mislead participants about the purpose of the study and staged a situation (Mr. W was a confederate)
Why researchers use deception: occurs because knowing the purpose can result in different outcomes (demand characteristics), and informed consent may bias the sample (what kind of person would agree to shock someone)
Two types of deception
1. Deception by commission
•Lying/leading participants to believe things that aren’t true
•Constructing a situation under false pretences
2. Deception by omission
•Leaving out some details
•Important: would these details change the participant’s decision to participate
Alternatives for deception
1. Role play (experimenter describes a situation and asks how people would respond - not considered same level as deception because they aren’t part of the story and demand characteristics)
2. Simulation studies: mimicking real life experiences (Zimbardo)
3. “Honest” experiments: does not try to misinform/hide information
•ex: speed dating, services (A&D testing)
Decrease in deception seen today
- Researchers became interested in cognitive variables so used methods that were similar to those used in memory and cognitive psychology
- The awareness of ethical issues has led to researchers choosing other methods
- Ethic committees (REB) now review more carefully, so elaborate deception is only approved when research is important and there are no other alternatives
- Such elaborate setups are difficult to achieve successfully (impractical)
Debriefing
Deals with issues around withholding information, deception, and potential harmful effects of participating by revealing the study’s purpose
•required when study uses partial disclosure or deception to explain why this was necessary
•can serve educational functions: telling them the results, why its being studied, etc
•Milgram: no long term negative impacts were found (thorough debriefing)
Characteristics of debriefing after deception:
1) funnel questions for suspension: see if they knew they were being deceived
2) explain research purposes to participants at the end of the study and why deception was necessary
3) apologize
4) tell them not to tell others about the deception
Designing research to uphold core ethical principles: Justice
Involving people equitably in research
•any decision to exclude certain people must be justified scientifically
•historically: people used powerless/marginalized people (racially/economically)
•participants and their societies should benefit from the study
Monitoring ethical standards at each institution
Researchers often compete for funding from the tri-council agencies
•each institution that receives funding must have a research ethics bored (REB) who reviews all research projects for ethical standards
•TCPS categorizes research according to the amount of risk involved (each REB is slightly unique in its measurements)
Exempt research
•REB considers no risk and does not require REB review because it only uses publicly available information, naturalistic observation, or uses data thats already collected and is anonymous
Minimal risk
•Risk of harm are no greater than in daily life
•Institutional policies can be more conservative than TCPS
•REB can be delegated to single member rather than the whole committee
•Looks at the type of risk, probability of it occurring, the amount of risk, and the vulnerability of the participants
•Look at the nature of your research topic and procedure (ex: 5 factor model)
•Types of risks to consider: physical, social (loss of privacy, reputation), psychological or emotional harm (embarrassment), vulnerability
Greater than minimal risk
•Thorough review by REB committee
•Needs informed consent, safeguards
•Often regards sensitive information (sex, an at risk population, etc.)
Minimal risk and greater than minimal risk
•if its between, it will be greater
•application to REB: describes the risk and benefits, procedures for minimizing risks and recruiting participants, copy of informed consent form, debriefing process, confidentiality
•continuing review (once a year)
Ethics in animal research
Researchers can carefully control the environment, study the same animals for a long time, study drug use, and monitor behaviour 24 hours a day
•regulations: proper housing, feeding, cleanliness, and health care (must avoid cruelty and unnecessary pain)
Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAR)
•organization sponsored by CIHR and NSERC to oversee ethical use of animals in science in canada
•institutions with animal testing must have an animal care committee to insure regulations are being followed
Three Rs
1. Replacement: replacing use of animals when possible
2. Reduction: minimizing number of animals being used
3. Refinement: modifying procedures to minimize pain/distress
Disciplinary Professional Society Ethics Codes of Conduct
APA and CPA: formulated ethics codes (ethical principles and standards for all aspect of professional academic careers)
Includes
•human and animal research
•teaching, clinical practice, publishing, statistical analysis, etc.
(READ OVER IN TEXT)
Scientific misconduct
Fraud: detected when findings cant be replicated (often through peer review)
•why people do it: pressure to produce impressive results
•ethical data analysis: rounding numbers is fraud
Two types of fraud:
1. Fabricating: making up data sets
2. Collecting data from real participants but altering the numbers to fit the data analysis
Plagiarism: presenting someone else’s ideas
•Must give proper citations
•Internet resources have increased plagiarism activity
Why go through an ethics review process
1) Grant funding
2) A university requirement
3) Sign when submitting an article for publication
•”Data were collected in accord with the ethical guidelines of the APA”
4) Some consistency
5) Take the perspective of trusting participant
Minimal Risk at UBC
CHART
UBC has behavioural and clinical REB
Lab projects: must be minimal risk
•minor deception is ok if not changing or omitting info that would affect participants decision to participate
•err on the side of caution
•essential to ensure anomitity in data collection and confidentiality in responses
