Ways of dealing with ethical issues

1. Three techniques do most of the work: debriefing, the right to withdraw and confidentiality.
2. All three are written into the British Psychological Society's Code of Ethics and Conduct, which every UK psychologist works to.
3. Each technique protects the participant while leaving the study possible to run.

Debriefing

1. Debriefing is the full explanation given to participants once their part in the study is over.
2. The researcher states the real aim, reveals any deception that was used and explains why it was needed.
3. The researcher checks the participant is not upset, answers their questions and offers support or a contact if they are.
4. The participant is offered a last chance to have their own data taken out.
5. It is the technique for deception and for lack of full consent, and it also deals with mild psychological harm.
6. Strength: the participant leaves knowing the real aim, so the study ends with them fully informed.
7. Strength: asking participants what they thought the study was about shows whether demand characteristics affected the results.
8. Weakness: it comes after the event, so any distress has already happened and an explanation cannot undo it.

The right to withdraw

1. The right to withdraw is a promise, made before the study starts, that a participant may stop whenever they like.
2. They need give no reason, face no penalty and can ask for their data to be destroyed afterwards.
3. It is the technique for psychological harm, because anyone finding the task distressing can leave at once.
4. Strength: it keeps taking part genuinely voluntary from the first minute to the last.
5. Weakness: people often feel unable to use it, especially pupils asked by a teacher or anyone who has been paid.
6. Weakness: when the people who leave share a feature, such as finding the task hardest, the remaining sample becomes less representative.

Confidentiality

1. Confidentiality is the promise that nothing in the results can be traced back to a named person.
2. It is the technique for the harm of exposure, such as embarrassment if an answer became public.
3. In practice each participant is given a code number, and that number goes on the record sheet in place of a name.
4. The list linking names to numbers is kept separately and locked away, then destroyed once the study is written up.
5. Results are reported as totals, means and ranges for the whole group rather than as a list of individuals.
6. Any detail that would identify someone is left out, such as the one participant who plays for the county football team.
7. Case studies of one person usually use initials, but Clive Wearing is named because he and his family agreed to it.
8. Confidentiality has one limit, explained at the start, because a researcher who learns that someone is at risk of serious harm must pass that on.
9. Strength: a participant who trusts the promise answers a sensitive question honestly, so social desirability bias drops and the data are more valid.
10. Weakness: it is hard to keep in a small group, since the one pupil in a class of 30 who reported four hours of sleep may be easy to work out.

Consent when the aim cannot be revealed

1. Presumptive consent asks a similar group whether they would agree to the study, and their answer is taken to stand for the real participants.
2. Prior general consent asks people to agree in advance that they may be deceived in some of the studies they later take part in.
3. Neither replaces real informed consent, because the person who took part still never agreed to what happened to them.
4. Both are therefore followed by a full debrief once the study is over.

The BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct

1. Respect means treating participants as people with rights, including consent, privacy, dignity and the right to withdraw.
   1. This is the principle behind gaining consent and keeping data confidential.
2. Competence means working only within what the psychologist is trained and qualified to do.
   1. A psychologist who is not trained to handle distress should not run a study likely to cause it.
3. Responsibility means protecting participants from harm and taking responsibility for their welfare during and after the study.
   1. This is the principle behind debriefing and behind offering support afterwards.
4. Integrity means being honest and accurate, so deception is kept to a minimum and results are never invented or altered.
   1. Reporting the method and the results honestly is what lets another psychologist repeat the study and test its reliability.

Ethics committees

1. An ethics committee is a panel that reads the plan before any participant is recruited.
2. It can approve the study, ask for changes such as a stronger debrief, or refuse it outright.
3. The review happens before recruitment, because harm cannot be undone once it has occurred.
4. Universities, the NHS and schools all run their own committees, so most UK research passes one.

Cost-benefit analysis

1. Cost-benefit analysis is the judgement a committee makes when it weighs what the study would gain against what the participants would carry.
2. The benefits are gains such as new knowledge, better treatment or a change to how schools teach.
3. The costs are the deception, stress or loss of privacy the participants would carry.
4. When the costs outweigh the benefits the study does not go ahead.
5. A weakness of the method is that both sides are estimates made before anyone knows what the study will find.

Strengths and weaknesses of the ethical system

1. Participants are protected and the public keeps trusting psychological research.
2. The Code is professional guidance rather than criminal law, so it depends on researchers and committees applying it honestly.
3. Some questions can no longer be studied at all, which is why several older studies could never be run again to check their reliability.
4. Removing deception can lower validity, because participants who know the real aim are more likely to produce demand characteristics.

Turning this into marks

1. When a technique and its effect are both asked for, keep them as two separate points, one describing the step taken and one saying what it does for the participant.
2. Describe the actual step, such as reading every participant a debrief sheet that explains the real aim, because "be ethical" does not secure the knowledge mark.
3. Choose a technique that fits the issue in the procedure described, since code numbers answer a privacy problem and a debrief answers a deception.
4. The mark most often lost is placing the debrief before the study rather than after it.