Virtual lab home | Assignments & due dates Ethics

Objective: To become aware of the ethical principles that apply to psychological research

Prerequisite: Ch. 2

Assignment due by: Wed. 4/11, 8 pm. Do not leave it to the last minute. If you all try to access the site on-line at the same time, you won't get through.

Instructions: Compose your answer ahead of time and then post it using the ethics form. Take a look at the form to get an idea of how the responses will be collected.

Do not simply sit down and compose your answer in the above form unless you have great confidence in your ability to respond from the top of your head. You will not get a second try.

Write out your answers ahead of time, edit your response, eliminating unnecessary words and irrelevant reactions. A longer answer is not necessarily a better one. Say only as much as you need in order to communicate clearly.

Responses (without names) will be posted in the chatroom late Thursday morning. Take a look at all of them and comment by Friday 4/13, 8 pm.

Description: Respond to each of the 3 cases listed below. I suggest printing this out, composing your answer in your word processing program, letting it sit for a few hours, reviewing your response, and then posting it.

CASE 1. An investigator wants to explore variables affecting stress. He proposes to ask students from the Psychology Department subject pool to take part in a anagram task, which involves making words from scrambled letters.

Students will be asked to participate in pairs, one member of whom is randomly chosen as the Experimental Subject and the other is the Control. The Experimental subject is told that solving anagrams is a measure of intelligence (IQ). The Control subject is told that the task has nothing to do with IQ. Unknown to the subjects, the version of the anagram task given to the Experimental subject is always more difficult than that given to the Control subject. This ensures that the Control subject scores more points. The experimenter measures the blood pressure of Experimental and Control subjects before and after each anagram competition.

Questions:

1. Which two (2) APA ethical principles do you consider the most relevant to this proposal (e.g., risk, informed consent, deception, privacy, etc.)? Explain your choices.
   
   
2. Which APA principle seems the least relevant in this particular study? Explain why.
   
   
3. On a scale from 1 (low) to 10 (high), rate

1. The potential benefits from the study
   
   
2. The costs or risks to the participants

Make your decision based on the information provided; don’t assume that procedures not described are part of the research design. (Adapted from Zechmeister & Shaughnessy)

CASE 2.

Topic: Response of Cell Phone Users to an Invasion of Personal Space.
Subjects: 50 people in public locations using cell phones.
Investigator: A UCD graduate student in psychology with a faculty sponsor.
Method: 25 cell phone users (randomly selected from the total of 50) would have their space invaded (i.e. the student would sit within two feet of the user). For the remaining users, the student would remain over 6 feet away. In each case, the student would time how long the user remained in the same location and note shifts in body orientation.

Make your decision based on the information provided; don’t assume that procedures not described are part of the research design.

Questions:

As a member of the UCD Institutional Review Board (IRB), would you

approve the above proposal? Why or why not?



would you add any additional requirements to safeguard the participants? Why or why not?



On a scale from 1 (low) to 10 (high), rate

1. The potential benefits from the study
   
   
2. The costs or risks to the participants

CASE 3. Alice, a UCD undergraduate with a faculty sponsor, proposes to study bike injuries in Davis, using records at the UCD Health Center and the Davis Police Department.

Questions:

1. Whose permission, if any, should Alice obtain before beginning the study?
   
   
2. If the study is approved, what information should the Davis Police Dept. & the UCD Health Center release to Alice?
   
   
3. If the study is approved, what safeguards should be established to protect the privacy of people named in the records?
   
   
4. Are there conditions that should be established regarding publication of the findings?
   
   
5. On a scale from1 (low) to 10 (high), rate
   

1. The potential benefits from the study
   
   
2. The costs or risks to the participants