Ethics in research

Design a study to investigate students’ experiences of online learning.

In your answer you will gain credit for providing appropriate details of the following:

• the type of self-report technique that will be used, with justification

• an example of one relevant question that could be used to collect qualitative data, with justification

• how you would ensure the ethical treatment of participants

• how content analysis could be used to analyse the qualitative data.

Outline one ethical issue that has arisen in social influence research. Refer to one or more social influence studies in your answer.

A psychologist conducted a case study of a patient who had difficulty sleeping.

Briefly explain one ethical issue the psychologist would need to consider in this study.

The researcher noticed age-related differences in the types of play mentioned in the diary

entries. They designed an experiment to investigate the differences in play choices between 2-year-old and 4-year-old children.

The researcher carried out the study using children from two local nursery schools. There were 30 children of each age group at nursery A. There were 20 children of each age group at nursery B. All parents gave informed consent for their children to take part in the study. The researcher used stratified sampling of the nurseries. Ten 2-year-olds and ten 4-year-olds took part in the study.

Each child was observed for 15 minutes during playtime in an area of the nursery where they could choose to play with building blocks, a sandpit and a slide. The researcher recorded how long each child spent playing with each activity.

Explain how the researcher could have obtained informed consent from the parents for this study.

Identify two ethical issues in the design and conduct of psychological research. In each case, explain how the issue you have identified could be dealt with.

One ethical issue in this study is deception, as the students were unaware that the sleep data they could see on their phones had been manipulated by the researcher.

Explain one way in which the researcher might deal with the deception in this study.

The feedback from one of the schools was that recreational screen time affected pupils’ social interactions. The psychologist decided to investigate this further by using an observation of social interaction during playtime at the school.

Design the observation to investigate pupils’ social interaction in the playground.

In your answer you will be awarded credit for providing appropriate details of:

• type of observation, with justification

• choice of time sampling or event sampling, with justification

• dealing with one relevant ethical issue

• assessing reliability of the data through inter-observer reliability.

Discuss ethical issues in social influence research.

The psychologist decided to conduct an experiment to investigate the effect of watching horror films before going to bed.

A volunteer sample of 50 university students consented to take part in the experiment.

The 50 students were randomly split into two groups. Group 1 watched a horror film before going to bed each night for the first week then a romantic comedy before going to bed each night for the second week. Group 2 watched the romantic comedy in the first week and the horror film in the second week.

When the students woke up each morning, each student received a text message that asked if they had had a nightmare during the night. They could respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Write a brief consent form that would have been suitable for use in this experiment.

The consent form should:

include some detail of what participants might expect to happen

refer to ethical issues

be in an appropriate format/style.

At the end of the survey, researchers wished to treat the students ethically. They used the following statement in their debriefing:

‘Thank you for taking part in the survey. Your data will be very useful. Have you any questions?’

Suggest two additional points that could be added to the debriefing statement to better ensure ethical treatment of the students.

At the end of the survey, the researchers wished to treat the students ethically. They used the following statement in their debriefing:

‘Thank you for taking part in the survey. Your data will be very useful. Have you any questions?’

Suggest two additional points that could be added to the debriefing statement to better ensure ethical treatment of the students.

At the end of the survey, the researchers wished to treat the students ethically. They used the following statement in their debriefing:

‘Thank you for taking part in the survey. Your data will be very useful. Have you any questions?’

Suggest two additional points that could be added to the debriefing statement to better ensure ethical treatment of the students.