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March 29, 2024, 10:05:47 am

Author Topic: Psych reports: ethical consideration  (Read 3884 times)

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Bri MT

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Psych reports: ethical consideration
« on: June 21, 2019, 04:45:09 pm »
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When it comes to writing up reports, part of what you need to demonstrate is “considered management of risks and ethical or environmental issues”. Obviously you should be following the ethical principles in any experiment you conduct (I hope this is obvious anyway….) but this alone isn’t enough to get you the marks. 


Here are some things to check you are following for the ethical principles:

 - informed consent: remember that if you are working with children (aka people under 18) you need informed parental permission before you do the experiment – a consent form can help you here.
 - confidentiality: don’t give away information about individuals in your report, and control who has access to wherever you are keeping any data that isn’t anonymised – this should be in your consent form.
 - voluntary participation: don’t pressure them into participating, make it clear that they can discontinue their involvement at any time etc.
 - withdrawal rights: remember that withdrawal rights isn’t just about them choosing to leave the experiment – it’s also about them choosing to have the information collected about them removed. If this isn’t possible due to data being collected anonymously, this needs to be made clear before the experiment
 - use of deception: yes, deception is sometimes used in experiments (which requires it being approved by an ethics community) but the simplest way for you to respect this principal is to not use deception at all. If you do want to use a methodology that requires deception make sure you talk to your teacher about this during the planning phase.
 - debriefing: Remember that debriefing isn’t just about explaining information, but also about addressing any harm caused. You may consider it extremely unlikely that harm would occur from your experiment but you should still have a procedure in place anyway – such as referring students to a school counsellor.

This comes in under a range of areas, but if food is part of your experiment consider the potential for harm with allergies.


Here are some ideas for communicating your management of ethical issues

(you can use dot-points for this section of the report)
- describe the method you used to gain informed consent (eg form), who gave consent (eg parent), and that consent was obtained before the experiment
- describe the debriefing procedure
- describe how you maintained confidentiality (eg responses were entered into anonymous forms using surveying software)
- list that you reminded participants of their withdrawal rights etc. ( a briefing just before the experiment is a good time to do this)
- if you used a method that brings up withdrawal rights complications or deception explain why


What NOT to do

- don’t just say you considered ethical considerations (instead prove it by discussing the components of this)
- don’t just list ethical principles (apply them to your experiment specifically)
- don’t condition a young child into being scared of white rats, video it, never obtain permission from a parent or explain what you’ve done, and leave the university without attempting to reverse the conditioning  (Little Albert deserved better)


If you're not sure how to apply this to your experiment or have any other questions or comments please feel free to reply! :)
To do so, you'll need to register here for FREE to ask any questions you may come across in your QCE studies!