Analyzing Research Methods and Statistics

¶ … Ethical Responsibility

There are several ethical responsibilities that psychologists need to consider when conducting a research with adult human participants. The first is to follow APA (American Psychological Association) ethics standards for rights of the participants (Zechmeister, n.d., p. 53). Second, the researchers must conduct a risk-benefit analysis before carrying out the study. Third, the researchers must take informed consent of the participant, which is the critical ethical responsibility in every exploration. Fourth, maintaining the participant's confidentiality is another major ethical task. Privacy should be maintained in order to gain true data from the respondents. Fifth, deception should be avoided. Last, a quick but comprehensive debriefing should be given to the human adults so that any possible misconceptions could be avoided.

Historical Example of Psychological Research

One historical example of psychological research that raised serious ethical questions is Milgram Obedience Study (Cherry, 2016). It was conducted after World War 2, in 1961. Newspaper ads were published to recruit the volunteering participants for a petty cash amount of $4.50. A shock generator was given to the participants labeled from "slight shock" to "danger: severe shock." The participants were informed to take the role of a "teacher" who had to shock their "learners" sitting in the next room at their every wrong answer. The persons sitting in the next room were pretending to be shocked with currents as they were deceivingly shrieking at every button pressed by the 'teachers'. Most of the participants asked to discontinue as they heard the learners shouting and pleading to stop, and sometimes only remaining silent. However, the experimenter asked the teachers to carry on. It was concluded that 65% of the participants as 'teachers' obeyed and went on to give shocks. The amount of anxiety experienced by the participants was high since they were not informed completely about the experiment that the persons in the next room are not receiving shocks in real. The ethical concerns involved in this experiment were deception and not disseminating complete information about the experiment. Moreover, it also appeared that APA ethical code of research conduct was not followed, as the researchers did not employ a comprehensive debriefing about the experiment, which ultimately raised misconceptions.

Another historical example is of Zimbardo prison study. According to this study, 24 male participants were selected for role playing of "prisoners" for two-weeks and were paid $15 for this task (Cherry, 2016). The mock prison was set up at Stanford University; the participants were shortlisted from 70 volunteers for being mentally strong and had no specific medical conditions. The participants were not told that they would be arrested by the real police, would be handcuffed, jailed, would be abused and the communications that took place between guards and jailers were hostile. Many participants felt stress, acute anxiety and started crying as the role-playing police guards became more hostile than needed and even more aggressive. Consequently, the experiment had to be stopped on the sixth day. Again, the ethical concerns involved in this example were deception, as true information was not disclosed to the participants, not following APA ethics code of conduct for the research, and incomplete debriefing.

Ethical Questions Involved in Research Using Children and Special Population

The ethical questions involved when completing research using children are whether harm and benefits of the research to the children were considered, whether their informed consent was present, whether their privacy and confidentiality was maintained, and whether payment or any compensation were made to them, if needed (ERIC, n.d.).