Research Ethics & Study Design

• Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes.
• Science is a way of understanding the natural world through systematic empiricism, empirical questions, and public knowledge.

Systematic Empiricism

• Learning requires methodical and consistent approaches to behaviors, events, or occurrences.
• Protocols, criteria, and methods are required to ensure observations are unbiased, repeatable, and accurate.

Empirical Questions

• Empirical questions can be answered by systematic observations.

Public Knowledge

• Detailed research descriptions are available to other researchers and to the general public, often through professional journal publications.

Difference between Science and Pseudoscience

• Pseudoscience lacks one+ features of science, despite being presented as scientific.

Falsifiability

• A claim is falsifiable if an observation could count as evidence against it.
• Scientific claims must be falsifiable.

Concerns about Pseudoscience

• Human behavior can't be predicted with perfect accuracy.
• Much of pseudoscience's subject matter isn't observable directly.

Scientific Method

• Observation, research, background, hypothesis, experimentation, data collection, analysis, conclusions, and repetition.

Basic vs. Applied Research

• Basic research is the study of fundamental human behavior for the sake of learning something new.
• Applied research is conducted primarily to solve a practical problem.
• Basic and applied research can influence one another.

Open Science

• Includes pre-registering studies, openly sharing study materials and data.
• Encourages the replication of previously published studies.
• Set of practices intended to make scientific research more reliable and transparent to scientists and the general public.
• Poorly conducted scientific work can have profound effects.
• Open science practices do not eliminate statistical flukes, but they make them less frequent.
• Practices include publishing replicated studies, pre-registered studies, better descriptions of study conduct, and larger sample sizes.

Science vs. Common Sense

• Common sense: intuitive beliefs about human behavior and mental processes.
• Forming detailed and accurate beliefs requires powers of observation, memory, and analysis not naturally possessed.
• Shared beliefs are assumed to be true due to intuitive sense.
• Focus is put on cases confirming beliefs, not challenging ones.
• Belief provides hope.
• Critical thinking requires skepticism.

Skepticism

• Cautious approach to claims and hypotheses until supported by empirical evidence.
• Consider alternatives.

Tolerance for Uncertainty

• Often, insufficient evidence to fully evaluate a belief or claim.

Clinical Practice of Psychology

• Diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and related problems.
• Clinical psychologists diagnose and treat psychological disorders and related problems.
• Types of psychologists include clinical, school, marriage and family therapists, and licensed clinical social workers.

Empirically Supported Treatment

• Psychological treatment shown to be effective in scientific research studies.
• Treatments include acceptance and commitment therapy for chronic pain.
• Behavioral activation for depression.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy for adult ADHD.
• Dialectical behavior therapy for borderline personality disorder.
• Exposure therapy.
• Family-focused therapy (bipolar disorders).
• Stimulus control therapy (insomnia).

Trigger Warnings

• Journals are researching if trigger warnings strengthen or undermine individual resilience.
• Journals indicate that trigger warnings increase anxiety.

Research

• Includes finding research ideas, turn them into empirical research questions, and review the research literature.

Variable

• Something measurable, changeable, and quantifiable.

Types of Variables

• Quantitative (number).
• Categorical (assigned a class).

Population

• Large group of humans.
• People with psychological problems.

Sample

• Is a subset of a population (e.g., college students).
• Using a representative sample is crucial.

Random Sampling

• Every population member has an equal chance of being selected.

Convenience Sampling

• May not be representative of the population.

Operational Definition

• A precise definition of how a variable will be measured.
• Ex: paper and pencil depression scale.

Score

• Individual result

Data

• Set of scores

Single-Variable Questions

• How often do universities faculty give trigger warnings or how talkative are American college students.

Single Variable Categorical

• Measurement needed to compute percentage of scores.
• Single-variable experiments do not explain much about observed phenomena.

Statistical Relationship

• Differences in average scores of one variable relative to another variable.
• Provides information: causes, consequences, development, organization.

Basic Relationship Forms

• Difference between groups.
• Correlations between quantitative variables.

Differences Between Groups

• Discrepancy between groups.
• Are women more talkative than men?
• Are college students who receive trigger warnings more anxious than those who don't?

Correlation Between Qualitative Variables

• Average score on one variable differs systematically.
• Happier people associated with being more talkative.
• College students learn less if anxious.

Positive Correlation

• Higher scores on one variable tend to be associated with lower scores on the other.

Negative Correlation

• Higher scores on one variable tend to be associated with lower scores on the other.

Pearson's r

• Measures the strength of the correlation between 2 quantitative variables.
• Range is -1.00 to +1.00.
• Measures only linear relationships.

Independent Variable

• Variable thought to be the cause of another variable.
• Manipulated by the researcher in an experiment.

Dependent Variable

• Effect of the variable.

Correlation and Causation

• Correlation does not equal causation.
• Positive correlation of the number of electrical appliances that people use and the extent to which they use birth control.
• It would not make sense to give people toasters and hair dryers to try and increase the use of birth control.

Reasons Correlation Does Not Imply Causation

• Directionality problem.
• Third-variable problem.

Directionality Problem

• Two variables X and Y can be statistically related because X causes Y or because Y causes X. Whether or not people who exercise is related to happiness.

Third Variable Problem

• A separate variable could be causing X and Y.
• Physically healthy could cause people to exercise or cause them to be happier examples.

Media Misinterpretation

• Internet use in class leads to lower test scores.
• Conduct experiment.
• A type of empirical study in which an independent variable is manipulated and a dependent variable is measured while extraneous variables are controlled.

Finding Inspiration

• Sources of inspiration: informal observations, practical problems, previous research. Examples of general ideas: talkativeness, depression, bungee jumping.

Informal Observations

• Own and others behavior.
• Non-scientific sources: newspapers and books.
• Notice that you are always in the slowest moving lie at the grocery store. Could it be that most people think the same thing?
• Read in the local newspaper about donating money to a cause. - Who are these people?
• Extent to which ordinary people will commit immoral acts simply because they are ordered to do so by an authority figure.

Inspiration From Practical Problems

• How effective is psychotherapy for depression compared to drug therapy?
• To what extent do cell phones impair people's driving ability?
• How can we teach children to read more efficiently?
• What is the best mental preparation for running a marathon?

Inspiration From Previous Research

• Reading titles and abstracts from professional journals.
• Journals tend to be specific to narrow fields of research.

Research Questions

• Generate your own research questions by specializing it as a variable and ask how frequently it occurs
• Note that certain types of people that might exhibit more or less of the behavior, ask about other statistical relationships
• Possible to question general cultures/age groups

Evaluating Research Questions

• But what if you have more than one question?
• Feasibility
• Interestingness
• Extent to which the answer is in doubt
• Fills a gap in the research literature
• Has important practical implications
• Reasons to expect different answers to the questions
• Questions that have not been answered by scientific literature
• Trigger warnings- cell phones and driving
• Time, Money, Equipment and materials
• Technical knowledge and skill
• Access to research participants
• Longitudinal
• Statistical analyses
• "Tried and true" method
• Compare results with others
• Self help- pop psychology- dictionary and encyclopedia entries- websites
• Empirical research reports
• Review articles
• Presents new or existing theories

Justice

• Dr Andrew wakefield (said vaccines cause autism)
• Measles, mumps, rubella vaccinations.

Ethical Research

• Financial gain: lead researcher patented alternative vaccine
• Problems with procedure: Biased methods
• Medical license revoked
• Branch of philosophy that is concerned with morality Set of principles and practices
• Treatment may fail to help
• Procedure may result in physical or psychological harm
• Right to privacy may be violated
• Receiving a helpful treatment
• Learning about psychology
• Experiencing the satisfaction of contributing to scientific knowledge If study is uninterested or poorly designed resources are wasted
• Results could be misunderstood or misinterpreted with harmful -consequences
• Peoples rights to make their own decisions and take their own actions free rom coercion
• Participants were black men (below poverty level incomes) told they were being treated for "bad blood"
• Unavoidable ethical conflict
• Research that is beneficial to one group (scientific community) can be harmful to another (research participants), and vise versa

Nuremberg Code

• Ethics code for research with human participants written after WW2, consisting of 10 principles written in 1947
• Provided a standard against which to compare the behavior of men on trial who were convicted/sentenced to death.
• Similar to code created by the World Medical Council in 1964

Belmont Report

• Set of ethical standards for research with human participants published by the U.S department of health and human services in 1978
• Is known as the common rule- federal regulations for research with human participants based on the Belmont report
• A committee at a university, hospital, or another institution that reviews research protocols to be sure they conform to ethical standards.

Three Levels of Risks

• Exempt research
• Minimal risk research
• At risk research
• Published in 1952 and has been revised several times
• Includes about 150 specific ethical standards that psychologists and their students are expected to follow. Concerns practice of psychology- advertising one's services, setting and collecting fees -having personal relationships with clients
• Is formed that participants sign as a part of the informed consent process that describes procedure, risks and benefits, participants right to withdraw from the study and -any confidentiality issues
• Misreading participants about purpose and procedures of experiment
• Could be giving them false information or by withholding true information from them
• Use of confederates (involves themselves in experiment but knows what happens)
• Phoney equipment (like milgram's shock generator
• Authors name (the order in which those names appear should reflect the importance of each person's contributions to the research
• Modify research design (shorten or simplify procedure to prevent boredom or frustration)
• Pre Screening procedure (select participants on demographic)
• Types of deception

1. Actively mislead
2. Allow participants to make incorrect assumptions
3. Withhold information about the full design Write a protocol that describes the purpose of the study, research design and procedure, risks and benefits, steps taken to minimize risks, and informed consent and debriefing procedures

Quiz covering key concepts in research ethics, including feasibility, interestingness, Belmont Report principles, and the Common Rule. Also covers study design considerations.