Ethics in research

Research findings show that different types of praise can affect learning. You have been asked to carry out an experiment to test these findings.

You will use two groups of 17-year-olds who have booked 20 lessons at a local driving school.

In Group 1 the driving instructor will praise students’ effort during lessons.

In Group 2 the driving instructor will praise students’ driving ability during lessons.

All students will complete a driving test after their 20th lesson.

Imagine you carry out the experiment using the method that has been described.

Identify the following information:

• the experimental design and the type of experiment you will be using

• one ethical issue you will need to consider and how you will deal with this

• the results you will expect to find from your experiment.

A researcher wants to investigate the most common behaviours displayed by children during the sensorimotor stage of development.

The researcher and an assistant decide to carry out a controlled observation study.

One behaviour being observed is ‘shaking a rattle’.

Describe how you would carry out this controlled observation study.

You need to:

• identify a suitable age range of the target population

• suggest two suitable behaviour categories that could be used during the observation. Do not include ‘shaking a rattle’ as one of your categories

• briefly describe two ways the researcher could make sure there is interobserver reliability

• identify one way the researcher could make sure her study is carried out in an ethical manner.

Read the following information.

Explain one weakness of using a stratified sample when conducting research.

The responses of participants to Question 1 of the questionnaire are shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Responses of participants to Question 1: ‘Do you think your progress in lessons is positively affected by the amount of time you spend doing independent study?’

Calculate the percentage of participants who responded YES.

State your answer using two significant figures and show your workings.

Participants were also asked to estimate the amount of time they spent working and chatting to friends during a typical 70 minute study lesson.

The mean estimates for 30 participants are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Mean estimated amount of time spent working and chatting to friends during a typical 70 minute study lesson for 30 participants.

What is the ratio of time spent working compared to time spent chatting to friends ?

Write this ratio in its simplest form.

Read the following information.

Identify two ethical issues that researchers should consider in observation studies.

Sketch a frequency table the researcher and their assistant can use to collect information about the types of learning activity participants do during study lessons.

Include two categories of behaviour about types of learning activity in your frequency table.

Do not include ‘chatting to friends’ and ‘completing work’ as categories of behaviour.

The psychologist and their assistant had high interobserver reliability in their observation study.

Define what is meant by ‘interobserver reliability’ in observational research.

From the results of the observation, the researcher realised that students spent more time chatting to friends during study lessons than they had estimated on the questionnaire.

Briefly evaluate the use of questionnaires in psychological research.

In your answer, refer to the questionnaires about the use of study lessons that the sixth form students had filled in.

Solomon Asch carried out his famous ‘line’ experiment in the 1950s.

Discuss whether or not Asch’s study of conformity would be considered to be ethical now.

Use your knowledge of the British Psychological Society guidelines on ethical issues in psychological research to inform your discussion.

The ‘One day at a time’ research study asked people with a diagnosed mental health problem to regularly answer the question ‘What did you find difficult to deal with today?’

On 6 days, spread throughout the year, people were asked to write about their day.

An analysis of the answers was carried out and the difficulties most commonly mentioned by the participants were identified.

Many participants mentioned more than one of these common difficulties.

The results are shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Difficulties most commonly mentioned by females and males.

One result is missing from Table 2.

Which of the following is the most likely estimate of the missing result?

Use the results from the rest of the table to help with your decision.

The questionnaire was answered by 671 females.

What percentage of females mentioned experiencing stigma about their mental health problem as a difficulty they had to deal with in their day?

State your answer using three significant figures and show your workings.

The researchers wanted to use the real-life stories they had collected to encourage other people. The participants’ answers were made available on the internet for anyone to read.

Identify one ethical issue that the researchers carrying out the questionnaire needed to consider.

Describe how the ‘One day at a time’ researchers could have dealt with the ethical issue you have identified.

Outline one strength of using questionnaires to carry out psychological research.

Imagine you have been asked to carry out a follow up study to the ‘One day at a time’ research.

One of the individual effects of having a mental health problem is the negative impact on physical wellbeing.

The researchers have asked you to find out more about how the negative impact on physical wellbeing affects people with a mental health problem.

You have decided to carry out your study by doing a questionnaire. You plan to use opportunity sampling to select your participants.

In your answer:

• explain how you will select your opportunity sample

• write one question that will help you to collect relevant quantitative data

• write one question that will help you to collect relevant qualitative data.

Write your answers in the correct spaces provided.

How you will select your opportunity sample

Question for collecting quantitative data

Question for collecting qualitative data

A psychologist did a study to find out more about conformity.

She put participants into different sized groups.

She asked them to solve an easy maths problem. Then each person gave their answer to the problem out loud. In every group, there was only one true participant. The other people in the group were actors. The psychologist asked the actors to purposely give a wrong answer. The true participant always answered last.

The psychologist recorded how many times the true participant gave the same wrong answer as the others in the group. She believed this happened because they had conformed.

Her results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Total number of times the true participants gave the same wrong answer as actors in different sized groups.

Use the results in Table 1 to draw a histogram.

Provide a suitable title and labels for your histogram.

What is the ratio of the number of times the participants gave the wrong answer when the group size was 2 compared to when the group size was 6?

Write this ratio in its simplest form.

Outline one conclusion that the psychologist could draw about conformity from the results in Table 1.

In research investigating conformity, participants are often not told the real reason for the research. This goes against the British Psychological Society guidelines on ethical issues.

Justify the use of deception in studies of conformity.

Imagine that you have been asked to conduct a study to investigate the idea that non-verbal behaviour is learned. Use your knowledge of psychology to describe how you would do this.

In your answer include:

who your target population would be

a description of the procedure you would use and what data you would collect

one ethical consideration you would need to consider and how you would deal with this.

You have been asked to compare the different scanning techniques used to identify brain functioning. To do this, you are going to interview people who use scanning techniques to carry out their jobs.

You need to:

• write one appropriate question that you could ask your participants

• explain whether the data you collect from the interview will be quantitative or qualitative and why this type of data would be suitable

• identify one ethical issue you would need to consider and how you would deal with this issue.

You have been asked to compare the effects of using different learning styles to revise the structure of the brain. Describe how you would design an experiment to do this.

You need to include:

• the tasks participants would be asked to do to revise the structure of the brain using a verbaliser and a visualiser learning style

• one example of a standardised procedure that you would use and a justification for why this should be used

• one ethical consideration you would need to address and how you would deal with this.

You have been asked to research the effectiveness of self-management programmes as an intervention for addiction.

Explain how you would use interviews to do this research.

You need to include the following information in your answer:

• who your target population would be

• what your sampling method would be and how you would select your sample using this method

• an appropriate interview question you could use in your research.

Anonymity means that a person cannot be identified and the information they share cannot be connected to them. Self-management programmes for addiction usually allow the people who attend them to be anonymous.

People often do not want to take part in research if their identity is going to be revealed.

Identify an appropriate way of dealing with the ethical issue of anonymity in the research you described in 21.1.

You have been asked to design an experiment to investigate the effect of anonymity on conformity.

In your answer outline the following information:

• what your independent and dependent variables would be

• one thing you would do to standardise your procedure and why this would benefit your research

• the results you would expect to find from your experiment.

When carrying out the experiment you have outlined in your answer to Question 02.1 you should consider ethical issues.

Identify two ethical issues that you would need to consider.

Suggest one appropriate way of dealing with each of the issues you identify.

Ethical issue one

Ethical issue two

The people in the café do not know that a study is taking place and that they are being observed. This means they did not agree to take part or give the researcher permission to record their behaviour. Therefore the researcher did not get consent from the participants in her study.

Explain what is meant by ethical issues in psychological research.

Explain how the researcher might deal with the lack of consent in this study.

A researcher is going to carry out a questionnaire to find out if university students are addicted to harmful substances. All the students have been given full details about the study and have consented to take part.

Use your knowledge of psychology to:

• write one appropriate question that the researcher could ask the university students

• identify one ethical issue, apart from informed consent, that the researcher needs to address in this study. Explain how he could deal with the issue you identify.