Thursday 29 September 2011
Ethics In Research
Research is the basis for all psychological studies. Without research, all theories would stand as wild guesses as to what is really happening within the minds of the population with no evidence or investigation to back the ideas up. Psychology would have no weight as a subject without research, making research a vital area within the subject of psychology. However, research can often make giant leaps into difficult areas such as the well-being of participants both in and around the studies. For example, Zimbardo's prison experiment placed participants within a contrived prison environment. Some were assigned as guards and some as prisoners, and the actions of the guards placed the prisoners under extreme amounts of stress and anxiety. This may have caused them long-term psychological damage. Whilst the study is considered a classic, shaping how psychologists understand group aggression and behaviours, questions should be raised over how the research could have affected the participants. Was it ethical to place the participants under this amount of extreme stress and pressures? On the other hand, perhaps the deception and harm to participants could be justified due to the important, groundbreaking results shown by the research? For this reason, it is important that ethics are considered for each study undertaken by institutions and is why every institution has an ethics commitee to consider the effects on the participants versus the benefits the research would have. Without research there would be no developments within psychology, but care must be taken to ensure that harm is minimised and that research is practiced ethically.
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Just a piece of advice, use paragraphs, it breaks it down and easier to read.
ReplyDeleteCorrectly found, ethics are a huge part of successful research findings and unethical issues in emperical research will lead to heavy criticism and questioning the validity of the findings. Another study you could of looked at was the Milgram Obedience study, with a teacher- student based scenario, where the teacher would order the student (participant) to do something and the level of obedience was measured in how high the electric shock voltage was served to the partipant, given that they had refused the order. In this particular study there is psychological and physical harm at risk, we don't know what this would do to a person, and this measurement of obedience, also lacks ecological validity, as this would not be how obedience is usually measured.
I think you make a valid point in that psychology cannot progress without research, this being it's core factor in supplying the world with science based findings, using statistics and emperical research that allow us to advance in the knowledge that already exists. Ethical issues need to be addressed in every piece of research, as a lot of investigations are sensitive to ethical considerations including studies of schizophrenics (Rosenham) where psuedopatients are put at risk to diagnosed patients with schizophrenia. Good start up blog.
Well said about psychology having no weight as a subject without research, this is true. Also ethics should be considered before during and after any research. The blog was clear and easy to follow and understand
ReplyDeleteCompletely support what you said about research being a necessity in psychology as everything would just be wild guesses! I also think that the fact there is always new research and there are always new studies is what makes psychology interesting and appealing to study.
ReplyDeleteWhilst the consideration of ethical issues is of utmost importance in psychological research to protect the welfare of participants, perhaps they can also be a hindrance too, stopping people from investigating personal areas such as depression or any other forms of mental illness in as much depth as we would like. These are very hard subjects to investigate as they are of a very personal nature and could be potentially harmful for a patient of one of these illnesses to talk about. Also, despite the unethical nature of studies like Zimbardo and Milgram, they did find incredible results and provided a more in depth look at social conformity and obedience; such findings would be hard to replicate today due to the ethical guidelines that need to be followed.
I strongly agree with what you have written in this blog, psychology would indeed be nothing without research to support theories. Ethical guidelines are clearly put in place for a reason, but with some extreme cases, perhaps a more utilitarian approach could benefit a study? I believe that in some cases this may be a justifiable reason for some participants, such as in the Zimbardo study, to have some psychological stress as it made great leaps in knowledge on group aggression. However, ethics are in place to protect participants so very rarely should these rules be allowed to be broken for the benefit of a study and the outcomes it may discover.
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