Ethics Of Research: Informed Consent Or Deception

To ensure that a researcher’s enthusiasm for knowledge and understanding doesn’t let them get carried away, clear guidelines for ethical behaviour in research, a Code of Ethics, have been established by governments, institutions and various professional societies such as the American Psychological Association(APA), the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI).

Protecting individuals from harm ensures that researchers think the possible effects of their research on the candidates. For example, candidates rights and feelings should be well thought-out when planning the project and collecting the data from the individuals. Research should not cause harm or offence, but this should be considered in the context of the

Respect for human dignity includes two rights; the right to self-determination and the right to full disclosure. When conducting a research study these two rights must be maintained to ensure that the participants are not coerced into participation and that they are making the choice of their own free will. Patients must be provided with all the information necessary to make an informed decision and voluntarily participate. No deception or concealed data collection can be done because it will violate the patients’ rights.

Our study will comply with standard ethical research procedures. We will obtain informed consent from our participants before they participate in our study. Our potential participants will be fully informed about what will happen during our study; in addition, they will understand the effects that our study will have on them and our research (Grinnell, Unrau, and Williams, 2014). We will not use bribery, deception, threats, or any other forms of coercion in order to gain participants for our study. The physical/emotional safety of the participants will come before the research; therefore, we will adhere to all ethical research procedures.

Informed consent most closely interrelates to the guideline of deception. Deception is possibly the most controversial and also the most important aspects of research in psychology. Deception occurs when the experimenter withholds information about the study or the true aim of the study. In psychological research, it is important to use the least amount of deception possible. In all cases the researcher must take careful consideration to the benefits of any deception. If deception is carried out the participant is likely to experience: a feeling of being uncomfortable, negative feelings towards the research, and suspicion of the research. However, sometimes deception is necessary for the researcher because if the participants understand the aim of the study they could act differently according to the aim of the study. For instance, in memory research the researcher can inform the aim of the study because the participants do not know what they will be asked to remember.

A number of key terms describe the system of ethical considerations that the modern research establishments have set up to protect the rights of research subjects. Voluntary participation and confidentiality are principles that demands that the respondents to be free from coercion in any way when participating in the research, protected in the raw data, and published

Assessing ethical concerns is of key importance in planning, performing, and evaluating research, and includes four key issue areas of protection from harm, informed consent, right to privacy, and professional code of APA ethics (Cozby & Bates, 2012) These four areas of ethical issues must be considered whenever research involves human participants. Another important area for the researcher to review relative to ethical issues in human research is the importance of gaining an understanding of the internal review board (IRB). The purpose of this paper is to examine ethical concerns, and provide a brief review of the IRB, including when completion of an IRB application is required.

I made an informed consent form. In the informed consent form, I explained the purpose of the study, the methodology of the study and that I will ensure confidentiality by having no identifying information on the questionnaire. None of the participants raised concerns about their rights as a participant. One participant did ask about the purpose of the informed consent.

When this knowledge is combined with the fact that research participants do not mind being deceived, and that it can also be viewed as immoral not to conduct research on important problems, the scale seems to be tilted in favor of continuing the use of deception in psychological

Informed consent is extremely important during any experiments. If the participants do not get informed and consent on the experiment that they will be engaged in, they may panic or even get injured during the experiment. If a participant is injured, the participants have reasons to sue the experimenters. Therefore, before commencing any experiment, all participants must be informed about the experiment itself (such as discussing about the procedure) and any risk of harm that they may get. Experimenting with survey questions, for instance, experimenters should tell the participants about the types of questions that they may be asked and the amount of time the survey would take. Although doing surveys would not cause any physical harm, the experimenters

Informed consent means that the psychologist or researcher must make every effort to be sure the patient understands the purpose, benefits, risks, and other options of the test or treatment. Then the doctor or nurse must get the patient’s consent before starting (American Cancer Society,2014). The reason why this is required for every experiment, is because the participants has to understand the risks of the experiment so they are willing to agree on, or in other words, give consent to participate the experiment.

A standard requirement for research is that subjects give their consent to participate. There are issues concerning consent in drug addiction studies because consent must be

Another area of risk is the social harm, or the “risk of harm due to loss of status, privacy, reputation, and includes legal financial or employment risk,” that may result from participating in a study (BCEHI, 2013, p. 2). For example, research on heroin use with current users could present many social risks to participants including legal risks as heroin possession is illegal, threats to privacy, status, and reputation if confidentiality were violated (Burris & Davis, 2009). However, it is difficult to assess the social risk presented by a study due to the lack of data on social risks, complexity of social risks, and limited IRB familiarity with the participants’ specific social environment (Burris & Davis, 2009). Furthermore, it has been documented that third-party risk assessment of social risk, while valuable is quite costly (Burris & Davis, 2009). Therefore, if this is not possible Burris and Davis (2009) recommend a literature review on the population of interest (e.g. heroin users) to assess if the risk presented by the study would

Discuss the values and principles of ethical conduct in relation to gaining an informed consent from potential research participants in relation to your project.

Conducting a study using humans as participants raises a variety of ethical concerns. This is why it is necessary to inform the participants of the purpose of the interview or focus group and what it plans to accomplish. Also, the privacy of each participant must be respected when publishing or distributing all research findings. If these requirements are not met, the study being conducted will in turn become unethical.