Informed Consent

In psychology, one of the many ethical controls put in place is called informed consent, this means that before participants can take part in research they have to provide their consent.

The main problem with this is what constitutes informed consent, do we tell participants everything about our study, or only the parts we think are important. Most researchers choose to inform participants of the procedures of the study and any potential harm or benefit the study could provide, which I believe to be the correct way to go about it, because then potential participants know everything that is relevant, but you haven’t bored them with all the minute details, or providing them with a document so large that they don’t even pay attention (with an attention span like mine it’s a very real possibility).

Another issue with informed consent is the impact it can have on the validity of a study, sometimes if a participant knows, or guesses the intention behind a study, they will adjust their behaviour towards it, which can greatly skewer the results of a study and mess up an entire analysis. Though in studies where this is a serious issue, this effect can be negated by gaining what is known as retrospective consent, this means that you get consent for participation at the end of a study and provide full disclosure then, with only basic consent given at the beginning of the study. This technique was used in Milgrams study of obedience as participants had to believe they were actually causing someone harm.

Informed consent is a useful tool as it also allows us to see which studies are contentious in nature as participants will refuse consent to studies they believe are overly harmful which can also be used to test our own ethical procedures and controls.

Comments for my TA

https://notwilliam.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/obsrvational-psychology/#comment-110

 

http://psud43.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-case-studies/#comment-52

 

http://prpj.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/139092366_ce5b410228_o/#comment-30

 

http://leylaosman.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/3rd-february-recruiting-participants-for-studies/#comment-71

 

 

obsrvational psychology

There are many different ways of taking measurements in psychological research, one of these is the design method known as observations.

There are two type of observation, covert (meaning secretive) and overt (meaning out in the open)

Both of these have their disadvantages and advantages, for example, covert observations are very useful for eliminating what is known as the hawthorne effect. This effect states that when someone knows there behaviour is being observed, that behaviour changes. This means that the validity of the study is greatly improved as the study is very realistic, it occurs (usually) in a natural environment and is unaffected by the observation. It is however often difficult, if not impossible to view some behaviours in a truly covert way, e.g. childrens behaviour in the classroom, it is impossible to properly view children in their natural learning environment as the changes to the environment would be obvious for the children (imagine seeing a strange man sat in the doll house at the back of your classroom). Overt observations however, lack realism due to the hawthorne effect (and the fact there is usually a researcher there telling you what they’re looking for), however it does allow for greater manipulation of environmental factors and variables as the observation does not intend to investigate natural behaviours per se.

Comments for my TA

http://suuzblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/ethics-in-research-studies/#comment-46

 

http://pipwinstone.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/why-is-reliability-important/#comment-32

 

http://kiwifruit8.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/why-am-i-in-on-a-thursday-night/#comment-23

 

http://itsafreudianslip.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/week-11-weekly-blog-is-it-possible-to-prove-a-research-hypothesis/#comment-34

 

 

Social direction and reflexive attention

Langton and Bruce (1999) decided to investigate how cues affect where we pay attention and our reaction times when a stimulus appears, to do this, they presented participants with an image of a face pointing in one of four directions; up, down, left or right, followed by a stimulus in one of those four directions, however, the stimulus and the cue were not related and participants were aware of this fact. they found that participants reacted faster to the stimulus if it was in the same location pointed to by the cue, when the stimulus appeared after 100ms, but the difference vanished if the stimulus appeared after 1000ms, which suggests that facial cues trigger a reflexive shift of attention which makes it easier to respond to stimuli from the same direction.
One of the most interesting things about the findings in this research study is that not only was there a difference in the reactions dependent on cue location, but when the stimulus came after 100 ms the reactions were faster than the reactions when the stimulus appeared after 1000 ms, suggesting that the longer we have to prepare for an appearance, the slower we will respond.

For my Ta Thandi

blog comments

https://notwilliam.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/was-milgrams-study-into-obedience-unethical/#comment-84

https://notwilliam.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/was-milgrams-study-into-obedience-unethical/#comment-85

http://psucc5.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/how-should-we-ensure-our-research-findings-are-useful-outside-psychology-and-even-outside-the-wider-scientific-community/#comment-20

Qualititive vs. Quantitive

The scientific nature of a method used in research is dependent upon a number of criterion, of which I will discuss two.

Empiricism : Scientific measurements are empirical, they are based on data gathered using the five senses. Quantitive methods rely on the investigator taking a participant, exposing them to a stimuli and then taking some measurements and statistically analysing them as such, the experimenter has data that can be viewed and measured.

Qualititive methods such as IPA rely on the experimenter making judgements based on what the subject has said as such, there is no hard data meaning that they are less scientific.

Objectivity : For a measurement to be scientific it must be objective, Quantitive methods rely on the taking of data as stated above, as such it is fairly objective as, shall we say, numbers don’t lie. There is very little leeway for human bias in the interpretation of data. However, there is a lot of room in the collection of data for bias to creep into a study, e.g. androcentrism or eurocentrism in the selection of participants or design of a study, which means that data in those studies isn’t entirely objective.

Qualititive methods such as IPA however, rely on experimenters making ‘judgement calls’ They have to collect data and then attempt to view the data from the perspective of the subject in an effort to analyse any possible meaning behind it, which makes any extrapolations very subjective.

In conclusion, Whilst the Quantitive methods we use may contain more of the components that make something scientific, there is still room for improvement.

Homework for my ta

Qual or Quan?!

 

http://vickygoodwin.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/do-you-need-statistics-to-understand-data/#comment-23

 

Out with the old, and in with the new.

 

Qualitative Vs Quantitative

Was Milgrams study into obedience unethical?

I will, in the next few paragraphs argue that whilst Milgrams study may have been done for the right reasons, it was overall unethical.

Milgram performed his study by advertising a study in a local newspaper, once enough participants had responded, he invited them to a laboratory where he paired them up with a confederate (unknown to the participant) and set one of them as the teacher and one as the learner, once they’d done this the learner (confederate) went into a different room which could still be heard from the initial room, the teacher (participant) was then sat down in front of a box of switches and told to read some word pairings to the learner and test there recall, every time they got the pairing wrong, the participant was to flip a switch giving the learner an electric shock, going up in increments the more the learner got incorrect, going up to a deadly voltage (note the partipants were not actually giving electric shocks, they were simply led to believe that they were). Milgram was testing how strong an electric shock the participants would administer when ordered to by the experimenter, as such, whenever the participant said they didn’t want to go on or tried to stop, the experimenter badgered them until they continued.

The first ethical principal related to this study is that of deceit, participants were not informed of the nature of the study before participating, they believed that they were performing a study into the effects of punishment on memory, as such the participants did not know what they were agreeing to. This not only means that there was deception involved, but also that they had not given informed consent, a prerequisite of psychological research outlined by the apa.

The issue of deception was however, covered retroactively after the study when the participants were debriefed about the true details of the study and asked retrospectively if their data could be used, all participants agreed.

Another ethical concern within this study is that Milgram did not allow his participants the right to withdraw, when they expressed a desire to leave the study, the experimenter refused to let them leave and repeatedly told them to continue.

Overall, whilst Milgram made some attempt to follow up on the ethical difficulties within his study, there were other issues he made no attempt to deal with, causing great emotional distress to his participants, while many would argue that the results of this study, their importance and their applications make this research worthwile, it is my opinion that the ends do not outweigh the means.

Homework for my TA

http://pipwinstone.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/jamie-and-sarah-both-get-100-in-an-exam-are-they-equal/#comment-14

 

 

http://psychblogld.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/why-is-validity-important/#comment-16

 

 

http://prpij.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/can-psychology-as-the-study-of-humans-ever-be-objective/#comment-14