Chapter 7 Ethics and good measurement
We know that the last week was quite intense in terms of workload. You will be happy to read that this week will be more relaxed. There will be a couple of activities from Beth’s book that should hopefully not be too time-consuming to complete. In addition, we will ask you to run the online experiment again.
7.1 Ethical guidelines
Chapter 4 in Beth’s book lays out a number of ethical principles psychological research should adhere to. The overall principles are of course similar, but if you’re interested in the specific UK guidelines available from the British Psychological Society, you can access these on the BPS standard and guidelines page.
An example that is mentioned in Beth’s book chapter and that was mentioned in many of the forum posts as an interesting finding, is Milgram’s research into obedience. While Beth does mention Perry’s (2013) book, please note that a recent publication by Turowetz & Hollander (2018) questioned some of Perry’s conclusions. If you’d like to read more about Milgram’s research, you might also be interested in a relatively recent meta-analysis by Haslam et al. (2014).
As discussed by Beth, with studies like Milgram’s (or Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment, for that matter), there is a goal conflict. On the one hand, these studies might lead to relevant insights, on the other hand, they violate ethical principles. While attempts have been made to make Milgram’s study less ethically questionable (Burger, 2009), Miller (2009) has argued that the stress and coercion were perhaps key ingredients to Milgram’s experiment.
A frequent issue with psychological research is deception. Often it is necessary to mislead participants to some degree as it would not be possible to study certain phenomena if participants were aware that these phenomena are being studied. So, when is deception appropriate and when is it inappropriate? For the BPS, the main factor is the reaction of the participant when being told of the deception. The BPS code of Human Research Ethics states:
Deception or covert collection of data should only take place where it is essential to achieve the research results required, where there are no alternatives, where the research objective has strong scientific merit and where there is an appropriate risk management and harm alleviation strategy.
The experience of deception in psychological research may have the potential to cause distress and harm and can make the recipients cynical about the activities and attitudes of psychologists. However, since there are very many psychological processes that are modifiable by individuals if they are aware that they are being studied, stating the research focus to a participant in advance of the collection of data would make some psychological research impossible. There is a difference between withholding some of the details of the hypothesis under test and deliberately falsely informing the participants of the purpose of the research, especially if the information given implies a more benign topic of study than is in fact the case. This Code of Human Research Ethics expects all psychologists to seek to supply as full information as possible to those taking part in their research, recognising that providing all of that information at the start of a person’s participation may not be possible for methodological reasons. If the reaction of participants when deception is revealed later in their participation is likely to lead to discomfort, anger or objections from the participants then the deception is inappropriate. If a proposed research study involves deception, it should be designed in such a way that it protects the dignity and autonomy of the participants.
In the lab class, we will ask you to work on an ethics activity in small groups. You can download the ethics activity document here. You do not need to read this document before your lab class.
Thank you again for your excellent contributions to this activity! You can download the ethics activity document with the identified problems included here.
7.2 Identifying good measurement
For Chapter 5 in Beth’s book, we would like you to complete these two “Learning actively” activities from the book:
- Educational psychologists use teacher ratings of classroom shyness (on a nine-point scale, where 1 = “not at all shy in class” and 9 = “very shy in class”) to measure children’s temperament. Indicate which kinds of reliability would need to be evaluated. Then, draw a scatterplot indicating that the measure has good reliability and another one indicating the measure has poor reliability. (Pay special attention to how you label the axes of your scatterplots.)
- Consider how you might validate the nine-point classroom shyness rating example in Question 1.
- First, what behaviours might be relevant for establishing this rating’s criterion validity? Draw a scatterplot showing the results of a study in which the classroom shyness rating has good criterion validity (be careful how you label the axes).
- Second, come up with ways to evaluate the convergent and discriminant validity of this rating system. What traits should correlate strongly with shyness? What traits should correlate only weakly or not at all? Explain why you chose those traits. Draw a scatterplot showing the results of a study in which the shyness rating has good convergent or discriminant validity (be careful how you label the axes).
You can complete these activities on your own, as a pair or as a small group. If more than one person contributed, please add the names of everyone who contributed to the document you submit. Please submit your answers as a Word (.docx) document under the “Quizzes and Assignments” section on Moodle. Please take pictures of your drawings and insert these into your Word document.
The assignment submission link is labelled “Learning Actively, Chapter 5”. The deadline for submission is Wednesday, 27 October, 5pm. This assignment will not contribute to your overall mark. Formative assignments not submitted by the deadline incur no penalty. We will provide you with model answers after the deadline.
You can download a feedback file including model answers here.
7.3 Your first study, Part II
As mentioned in Lab 1 (see Section 4.5), we would like you to complete the flanker task once again to allow us to investigate how reliable the task is. Again, the flanker task can be completed online using a PC or laptop (but not a tablet or phone). Completing the experiment will take about 15 minutes overall. Please make sure you are not disturbed when completing the task (e.g., mute your phone, shut down apps that display notifications on your screen, turn off music). It is also important that you do your best to follow the instructions. This task has no hidden agenda. It really is about how good we are at focusing our attention and ignoring distracting information. Therefore, it is really important that you try to respond as quickly and as accurately as possible throughout the task.
You can access the experiment here. Please contact us if you run into any issues when attempting to complete the experiment.
Please participate by Monday, 25 October, 5pm.
