Ethics in Research

• Ethics are the rules of conduct required when conducting research.
• Institutional Review Boards (IRB) protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects
• IRB's have the authority to approve, disapprove, monitor, and require changes to research regulations and institutional policy.

Evolution of Ethics in Research

• Nazi doctors used inmates for research.
• The Nuremberg Code highlights the need for informed consent, prior animal work, qualified scientists, risk justification by anticipated benefits, and avoidance of harm.
• In the Willowbrook Hepatitis Study (1956), children were infected with hepatitis; Their informed consent did not include information about the potential hazards.
• In the Jewish Chronic Disease Study (1963), cancer cells were injected without explaining the risks.
• The Code of Medical Ethics (1966) highlighted which research studies included vulnerable patients who cannot make independent decisions.
• The Declaration of Helsinki (2013) states that physicians should protect the health, well-being, and rights of patients.
• The Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1972) led to disabilities in 100 subjects.
• The Belmont Report (1979) describes three ethics principles: autonomy, beneficence, and justice.
• The American Psychological Association is a scientific organization of psychologists in the United States.
• The APA advances and promotes psychology, regulates official titles, and publishes the Official Style Manual.

Ethical Principles and Code of Conduct

• Psychologists develop a reliable body of scientific knowledge based on research.
• Competence means recognizing the boundaries and limits of expertise.
• Integrity includes being honest, fair, and respectful.
• Psychologists consider the welfare and rights of their patients, clients, and students.
• Social Responsibility is awareness of professional and scientific responsibilities.

Informed Consent

• When obtaining informed consent, the research participant should be informed about the research purpose and procedure.
• They should be informed about their right to decline or withdraw.
• Participants should be made of aware of any consequences from declining or withdrawing.
• If the participant agrees, then they reasonably foreseeable factors that may influence to participate such as potential risks, discomfort, or adverse effects, should be disclosed.
• Any prospective research benefits, limits of confidentiality, and incentives for participation must be disclosed
• Potential participants should be informed of who to contact for questions about the research

Deception and Disclosure

• Deception is misleading research subjects by providing false information.
• Incomplete disclosure is withholding information about some aspect of research.
• Full disclosure is fully describing the nature of the study, rights, responsibilities, risks, and benefits.
• Debriefing is a full explanation of how and why subjects were deceived, and IRB requires debriefing immediately after participation.
• Confidentiality is separating or modifying identity in data
• Anonymity means collecting data without knowing any personal or identity information.
• The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 sets general standards for animal care.
• Animal rights are that all species that feel pain have equal value and rights.
• Falsification is the manipulation of research materials, equipment, or processes.
• Fabrication is making up results and recording and reporting them.
• Plagiarism is appropriating another's idea.

Plagiarism

• Forms of plagiarism include verbatim quotation without clear acknowledgement.
• Cutting and pasting from the Internet without clear acknowledgement is plagiarism.
• Paraphrasing or altering a few words and changing their order without citation is plagiarism
• Using inaccurate citations or unauthorized collaboration between students, failure to attribute assistance received, or failure to follow regulations on group work projects.
• Using material written by professional agencies or other persons is plagiarism.
• Submitting works that are already submitted is auto-plagiarism.

Experimental Design

• Non-experimental design means a researcher cannot control, manipulate, or alter variables and relies on interpretation or observation.
• Experimental design is used if the hypothesis relates to a single variable rather than a statistical relationship between two variables.
• Experimental design is used if it pertains to a non-causal statistical relationship between variables, and if the research question is about a causal relationship but the independent variable cannot be manipulated.
• It can also be used if the research question is broad, exploratory, or about what it is like to have a particular experience.
• Internal validity refers to the causal relationship of independent and dependent variables.

Threats to Internal Validity

• Confounding factors are unexpected factors that affect the results
• Maturation includes the passage of time
• Testing means a pre-test affects the result.
• Participant Selection means control and experimental participants differ.
• Attrition is when a long study causes a participant to drop out.
• Regression towards the mean is when scores are closer to the average.
• Instrumentation refers to how the dependent variable is measured
• Social interaction refers to the interaction between participants.

Validity

• External validity refers to whether research findings can be generalized to other settings and people.
• Testing can affect the reaction to treatment
• Sampling bias means participants differ from the population.
• The Hawthorne Effect is changing behavior when knowing they are being studied.
• The degree of manipulation of antecedent conditions concerns assignment of subjects to antecedent conditions created for an experiment.
• Treatment conditions are carefully controlled.

Variables

• Independent variable, and varies from low to high.
• Experiments have a high degree of manipulation; non-experiments are usually low.
• The degree of imposition of units is how much you limit a subject's responses on the dependent variables that may contribute to the data
• Nonexperimental designs vary from low to high imposition of units.
• Phenomenology is a description of one's own personal experiences.
• Phenomenology is low in manipulation of antecedent conditions and low in imposition of units (low-low).
• Case studies are in-depth studies of individuals, ranging from low-low to low-high.
• Retrospective data is collected in the present and is based on past events.
• Field studies are used in the field or real-life settings involving observation and interviewing.
• Field studies fall along the continuum of low-low to low-high

Field Studies

• Naturalistic observation is used by psychologists and social scientists and is low-low
• Ethology is studying behavior in the wild as well as in captivity.
• Participant observation is entering a group of people with a shared identity to gain an understanding of the community
• In covert research the researcher is "undercover"
• In overt research the researcher reveals true identity.
• Archival Study is when researchers reexamine data that were collected for other purposes.
• Archival research is collecting data from sources that already exist.
• Qualitative research obtains data consisting of words instead of numbers.
• Empirical phenomenology relies on the researcher's own experiences or experiential data provided by others.
• Reproducibility means others should be able to replicate the study with similar results.

Survey Research

• Survey research is a useful way of obtaining information about people's opinion, attitudes, preferences, feelings, and behaviors by asking.
• Surveys can also gather data about experiences and feelings.
• Survey research methods are divided based on the medium of conducting survey research.
• Online/Email surveys are one of the most popular.
• Phone surveys can be useful in collecting data from a larger section of the target population
• Face-to-face surveys work best for complicated problems, have the highest response rate, and are very costly.
• Longitudinal survey research involves conducting survey research over a continuum of time.
• Cross-sectional survey research collects insights from a target audience at a particular time interval.
• Survey questions should be effective, grammatical and logically appropriate
• Filter out irrelevant questions as per the requirements of the target audience
• Responses are analyzed to identify patterns in real-time

Questions

• Closed or structured questions have limited numbers of alternatives.
• Open-ended questions ask for opinions and feelings.
• Content analysis assigns responses to categories following standards.
• Research method is applied to open-ended questions.
• Scales of measurement in research and statistics defines variables and groups them.
• Nominal scales are categorical, such as gender.
• Ordinal scales are ordered or ranked.
• Interval scales have equal intervals but no true zero.
• Ratio scales have the highest level of measurement and a has a true zero point.

Response Style

• Response style affects how they respond to questions or tests regardless of content.
• Yea-saying is answering questions positively regardless of their content.
• Nay-saying is answering questions negatively regardless of their content.
• Survey data is defined as the resultant data that is collected from surveyed test subjects
• A self-administered questionnaire (SAQ) is completed by a respondent without researcher intervention.
• Reactivity is the tendency of subjects to alter their responses when aware of an observer.
• Mailed surveys involve mailing a questionnaire to a potential respondent to fill out and return by mail.
• Internet surveys refer to surveys that sample respondents via the Internet.
• Online surveys are the most cost-effective and can reach the maximum number of people.
• Telephone surveys require less investment than face-to-face surveys.
• Cellphone surveys improve coverage in conjunction with landline surveys.
• Interviews gather high-quality survey data and can be structured or unstructured.
• Reliability means the survey is consistent and repeatable.

Types of Reliability

• Over time (test-retest reliability)
• Across items (internal consistency)
• Across different researchers (inter-rater reliability)
• Validity means the survey measures the intended topic.
• Concurrent validity means a criterion is measured at the same time as the construct.
• Predictive validity is when an evaluation metric is measured at some point in the future.

Sampling

• Probability sampling is where a researcher sets criteria and randomly chooses members from a population.
• Simple random sampling is a basic form of probability sampling where a sample is selected in an unbiased way.
• Systematic sampling chooses sample members at regular intervals.
• Stratified random sampling divides the population into smaller, representative groups that don't overlap.
• Cluster sampling divides the population into representative sections or clusters.
• Non-probability sampling chooses members at random, and is not fixed or pre-defined.
• Convenience sampling depends on the ease of access to subjects.
• Purposive sampling depends on the discretion of the researcher, considering the study's purpose and target audience.
• Snowball sampling is applied when subjects are difficult to trace.
• Quota sampling selects members based on a pre-set standard.