Dealing with ethical issues

Dealing with ethical issues

• Dealing with harm

- Role play: this could be used in an attempt to avoid the stresses of the real situation. In a role play, participants are fully informed and will knnow at the start that they can withdraw from the study at any time.

e,g. Zimbardo used this technique for this Stanford 'prison study'.

However, despite the fact that it was only a simulation with fully informed consent, the participants still suffered severe psychological distress including crying, rage and extreme anxiety. The situation became too 'real' and had to be stopped after 6 days,

- Questionnaire: another way would be to use the questionnaire method and ask them how they would behave in a given situation. 

The problem with this however is that what we think we might do and what we actually do can be quite different. An example would be in Milgram's obidience study. Milgram asked people how they would behave but his findings were opposite to this as the participants continued shocking to extreme levels when everyone thought they would stop.

• Dealing with the issue of deception

- Debriefing: one way with this issue is to fully inform participants after the research has taken place. In other words, fully debrief them. During this process, participants will get the opportunity to withdraw by asking for their data…