Ethics, Reliability & Validity Flashcards
What are ethics?
Hammersley & Traianou, (2012) suggest ‘ethics’ can have 2 meanings:
1) “A field of study, concerned with investigating what is good or right and how we should determine this. On this interpretation, ‘social research ethics’ means the study of what researchers ought and ought not to do, and how this should be decided”
2) “A set of principles that embody or exemplify what is good or right, or allow us to identify what is bad or wrong…the phrase ‘social research ethics’ means ‘the set of ethical principles that should be taken into account when doing social research’ or ‘ the set of ethical principles held by social researchers’.” (p.16-17)
How is ethics related to morality?
- Howitt (2019) describes psychological ethics as “moral principles which govern all aspects of psychologists’ work” (p.404)
- It is not just about picking the most appropriate research method, but picking one that is responsible and morally defensible (Grey, 2018)
What are the 4 ethical principles published in the code of conduct by BPS in 1985?
Respect, Competnence, Responsibility and Integrity
What are the statement of values for respect?
Psychologists value the dignity and worth of all persons, with sensitivity to the dynamics of perceived authority or influence over persons and peoples and with particular regard to people’s rights.
In applying these values, Psychologists should consider:
a) Privacy and confidentiality
b) Respect
c) Communities and shared values within them
d) Impacts on the broader environment – living or otherwise
e) Issues of power
f) Consent
g) Self-determination
h) The importance of compassionate care, including empathy, sympathy, generosity, openness, distress, tolerance, commitment and courage
What are the statement of values for competence?
Psychologists value the continuing development and maintenance of high standards of competence in their professional work and the importance of working within the recognised limits of their knowledge, skill, training, education and experience.
In applying these values, Psychologists should consider:
a) Possession or otherwise of appropriate skills and care needed to serve persons and peoples
b) The limits of their competence and the potential need to refer on to another professional
c) Advances in the evidence base
d) The need to maintain technical and practical skills
e) Matters of professional ethics and decision-making
f) Any limitations to their competence to practise taking mitigating actions are necessary
g) Caution in making knowledge claims
What are the statement of values for responsibility?
Psychologists value their responsibilities to persons and peoples, to the general public, and to the profession and science of Psychology, including the avoidance of harm and the prevention and misuse or abuse of their contribution to society
In applying these values, psychologists should consider:
a) Professional accountability
b) Responsible use of their knowledge and skills
c) Respect for the welfare of human, non-humans and the living world
d) Potentially competing duties
What are the statement of values for integrity?
Psychologists value honesty, probity, accuracy, clarity and fairness in their interactions with all persons and peoples, and seek to promote integrity in all facets of their scientific and professional endevours.
In applying these values, Psychologists should consider:
a) Honesty, openness and candour
b) Accurate unbiased representation
c) Fairness
d) Avoidance of exploitation and conflicts of interest (including self-interest)
e) Maintaining personal and professional boundaries
f) Addressing misconduct
What are 4 of the main principles of conduct?
- Risk - “Risk can be defined as the potential physical or psychological harm, discomfort or stress to human participants that a research project may generate…These include, risks to the participant’s personal social status, privacy, personal values and beliefs, personal relationships, as well as the adverse effects of the disclosure of illegal, sexual or deviant behaviour.” (p.13)
- Valid Consent - “Every person from whom data are gathered for the purposes of research consents freely to the process on the basis of adequate information. They should be able, during the data gathering phase, freely to withdraw or modify their consent and to ask for the destruction of all or part of the data that they have contributed” (p.15) - Importance of ‘informed consent’(requires a participant information sheet)
- Confidentiality - “Information obtained from and about a participant during an investigation is confidential unless otherwise agreed in advance” (p.22)
- Debriefing - “When the research data gathering is completed…it is important to provide an appropriate debriefing for participants.” (p.26)
Outline ethics in qualitative research
“Qualitative inquiry raises distinctive ethical issues because…it generally involves emergent and flexible research designs, and usually entails collecting relatively unstructured data in naturalistic settings” (Hammersley & Traianou, 2012, p.8)
Qualitative research gets closer to the participants than quantitative work. Researcher’s directly access people’s lives, often in settings that could be considered private (e.g. in their homes)
- Participant Observation sometimes argued as being ‘surveillance’ (e.g. Nicolaus, 1968) or, in certain cases, voyeurism (e.g. Denzin, 1992).
- Interviews sometimes criticised as intrusive because participants are encouraged to disclose private information due to a false sense of rapport (e.g. Finch, 1984).
Outline confidentiality in qualitative research
Focus Groups involve a group of people discussing an issue together. These could be strangers or could be people who know each other (e.g. classmates or colleagues). Whilst a researcher can maintain confidentiality, there is an additional risk of participants ‘leaking’ information discussed. This can have serious consequences. It is imperative that all participants are told to maintain confidentiality before and after a session (Wilkinson, 1998). This can be further supported by the consent form having a specific declaration about keeping confidentiality – participants ‘sign up’ to maintaining confidentiality.
Outline anonymity in qualitative research
Antaki (2009) offers 10 ways in which information, such as names, in spoken data can be anonymised:
1) Use names with the same syllable length
2) Maintain gender
3) Make sure contractions are possible (e.g. Jennifer – Jenny – Jen)
4) Preserve ethnicity
5) Use replacements of similar commonness
6) Preserve probable conventions of age, class & locality
7) Country names can be left
8) City names can be left unless they allow a person to be identified
9) Town and village names can be replaced with similar fictitious places
10) Institutional names should be changed (e.g. company names)
Outline validity in qualitative research
Validity is a concept which is traditionally related to quantitative research. Generally, it is thought of as being ‘the extent to which something measures what it is intending to measure’. This presents problems for qualitative research as it is based on realist assumptions which many qualitative researchers argue against - i.e. that there is a something out there that is ‘fixed’ and measurable.
Howitt (2019) – offers some different ways in which validity is discussed by qualitative researchers: - Validity is based on how well the analysis fits the data. Therefore, it is not the objective validity of the measures used but the validity of the analysis that matters - The quality and detail of the transcription in relation to the recording from which it is based is often used as an indicator of the validity of a transcription. Potter (1998) offers the phrase ‘justification of analytic claims’ instead of validity.
What are the procedures for enhancing validity?
There are some procedures which qualitative researchers utilise as a way of enhancing the validity of their work. These include the following:
• Triangulation
• Comparing researcher coding
• Respondent validation
• Disconfirming (or negative) case analysis
• Audit trail
Detail triangulation
Based on the notion that different methods of data collection should produce similar results for findings to be considered ‘valid’.
Denzin (1989) – Four types of triangulation:
• Data triangulation – different data sources (e.g. studying a phenomena at different dates or with different people)
• Investigator triangulation – different researchers draw their own conclusions from the data
• Theory triangulation – Utilise different theoretical viewpoints
• Methodological triangulation – different methods used to study the phenomena from a number of perspectives
Detail comparing researcher coding
- Utilise a number of coders working with the same data
- This ensures a consistency of coding
- “Inter-coder (or rater) reliability” tests the level of agreement between two coders/raters.
- This can be tested with statistical analysis to determine the level of agreement
