Research Methods AS L9 - 12 (ethical issues, peer review, data, averages) Flashcards
What do most research institutions have, who do they consist of and what do they do?
- Ethical committees
- Psychologists, staff, members of public, people from other disciplines & subject areas
- Approve all research by checking for ethical issues
- Cost-benefit analysis to determine if research should be carried out
Cost-benefit analysis:
Potential harm of doing research is weighed up against potential gains
What did BPS publish, how many ethical guidelines are there and what are the most important ones?
Code of ethics:
- Fully informed consent
- Deception
- Debriefing
- Right to withdraw
- Confidentiality
- Protection of pps from psychological harm
Definition of informed consent:
- Right of the pps to provide voluntary info
- Should be informed about what will be required of them, the purpose of research, their right to withdraw
What should informed consent do?
Inform pps of investigation objective
Which individuals cannot give consent themselves and who gives consent on behalf of them in these situations?
- Children below 16 –> parental consent
- People w/ mental disorders/severe learning difficulties & others –> fam/immediate kin
Why is informed consent sometimes not gained?
It causes pps to alter their behaviour
Types of informed consent:
1) Presumptive consent
2) Prior general consent
3) Retrospective consent
Presumptive consent:
People of similar background are asked if they would be willing to participate in the study despite the deception if it was them
Prior general consent (+evaluation):
- Pps agree to be deceived w/out knowing when or how this will occur
- However, knowing this could affect their behaviour
Retrospective consent (+evaluation):
- Asking consent after participating in study
- However, if they do not consent, data has to be destroyed
Protection from harm (physical + psychological):
- Risk should be no greater than that of ordinary life
- Study should be stopped if there is suspicion that a pp may be harmed
- Pp should leave research in same condition they entered
Right to withdraw:
All pps must be made aware that:
- They can leave study at any time, regardless of payments & incentives, w/our having to explain
- They can withdraw their data at any point in future
If a pp appears distressed, they should be reminded of their right to withdraw
Confidentiality:
Data can be traced back to a name but should not be shared with others
Anonymity:
Data cannot be traced back to a name as pps have not provided their name
Who can participants’ data be disclosed to and in what circumstances does this change?
- Confidential and cannot be disclosed to anyone
- Unless agreed in advance
If research is publicised, what should be used instead of what and why?
- Numbers and letters instead of names
- Help protect pp’s identity
What is unacceptable in a study?
Withholding of info or misleading pps (deception)
What are the rules around intentional deception?
- Avoided whenever possible
- Should not be done w/out scientific/medical justification
- Unavoidable if pps would change behaviour knowing true nature of research
What needs to be explained to pps after study if deception is used?
- Real purpose
- What happened in other conditions
- Why deception was necessary
- Reminded of right to withdraw, right to confidentiality and need to show respect to other pps
- Opportunity for pps to ask qs about research
How is new knowledge validated in psychology?
- Proposal of research study sent to number of experts
- Research councils and funding agencies only support well-designed research
- Research ethics committee will scrutinise it
What is the only way for other researchers to have access to research, how often is this done and what process is used to check the quality of work?
- Publishing in print
- Only published in scientific journals few times a yr
- Peer review
Process of peer review:
1) University sends completed research to another psychologist working in similar field
2) Considered for publishing in psychological journal if high enough quality (standards dependent on journal eg. Nature and Science is very prestigious so more challenging to meet)
3) Research panel considers peer reviewers’ views
4) Poor quality researcg returned to researcher for modification
What type of peer review usually occurs, what is this and what is the advantage of this?
- Double blind peer review
- Expert psychologist carrying out peer review is anonymous so neither them nor the one who wrote the research know who each other are
- Bias is limited
What is one disadvantage of academic journals and how is this problem overcome?
- Physical copies + online subscriptions are expensive (many unis only buy few physical copies a yr)
- General public/Less well-off unis may not have access
- Process called ‘Open access’
What is Open Access and how does it work?
Open Access = New knowledge can be viewed online by scientific community and general of public
1) Good quality work is published
2) Readers decide its validity, leave comments/ rate articles/ ranked by peer review
Give one disadvantage of using online peer review
There can be people who only want to be hateful and do not give useful input to research
Process after psychological work has been published:
1) Research is disseminated internationally
2) New ideas can develop
3) Reputation of researcher increased and could gain funding
4) Uni looks good + will receive more money as they may receive more gov grants for research
What are the 3 functions of peer review according to one body (what is this)?
1) Allocation of research funding –> Public bodies like Medical Research Council can the process to decide whether the research will be useful as research is being paid for by charitable bodies/govs
2) Publication of research in academic journals –> Prevents publication of irrelevant findings, improves quality of research, increases probability of errors being detected
3) Assessing research rating of uni departments –> quality of research used to give rating
Overall what are the advantages and disadvantages of peer review?
+ Neutral and non-biased esp w/ double blind peer review
+ Provides a way to check validity and credibility of research
+ Involves specialist psychologist, who will have experimental knowledge
- Can be unfair as connections between psychologists can result in favouritism for some unis
- Can be unfair as some journals are easier to publish work in compared to others
- Groundbreaking research could be rejected purely due to poor presentation
Give one example where social influence was used to change people’s behaviour and attitudes
- Montana had a problem w/ alcohol related car crashed among 21-34 year olds
- 92% of this age group believed majority of their peers drove after drinking, even though the percentage was only 20%
- Misconception corrected by using an advert stating 4/5 young adults do not drink drive
- Alcohol-related car crashes massively reduced by informing them of actual social norm
What purpose have similar campaigns been used for?
- Reducing smoking
How does changing people’s behaviour and attitudes with social influence help the economy?
Burden on NHS is alleviated
What research was done about the memory and how did this help the economy?
- CI research, improving amount of accurate info for EWT eg. Gieselman et al (1984)
- Less money spent on wrongful arrests and less police time wasted
How does research into attachments help the economy?
- Shown importance of role of father eg. Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
- Both parents are capable of providing emotional support for healthy growth of child
- Modern parents can maximise their income, which helps economy
What did the McCrone Report estimate?
The direct cost of mental health issues in England is around 22.5 bil pounds a year
How much does absence from work cost the economy and what are a third of all absences caused by (source)?
- Absence from work: £15 bil a year
- Caused by mild to moderate mental health disorders eg. depression
- Telegraph (2014)
How has research on psychopathology, effective drug therapies and groundbreaking findings help the economy?
- Drug therapies: Cost of mental illness reduced so people can return to work
- Psychopathology: Improvements in health so people manage their health better and take less time off work
- Groundbreaking findings: Encourage investment from overseas
What are the limitations of providing more effective treatments for the economy?
- New therapies could be more expensive than old ones
- Significant financial burden to NHS
Nominal (discrete) data:
- Data are in separate categories
- Each person can only be placed in one category
Ordinal data:
Data are ordered in some way eg. liking, rank
Interval (continuous) data:
Data measured using units of equal intervals eg. miles, centimetres
Quantitative data:
- Data that represents how much there is of something (numerical)
- Easy to analyse
- Included in tallies and closed questions
Advantages of quantitative data:
- Easier to analyse than qualitative data, so graphs can be drawn easily
- Objective and less prone to bias
Disadvantages of quantitative data:
- Lacks validity, as variables in aim may not be the ones being measured
- Lacks meaning
Qualitative data:
- Data that uses words to give a description of what ppl think and feel (non-numerical)
- Lots of detail
- Includes interviews, observations and open questions
Advantages of qualitative data:
- Lots of detailed data
- High in validity and measures concepts in aim
Disadvantages of qualitative data:
- Unreliable, as it is unlikely the same results would be gained
- Difficult to generalise as you may be quite subjective
Primary data (+ limitation):
- Info collected directly from first-hand experience by researcher
- Provides exact type of data researcher is looking for
Limitation: - Takes a lot of time and effort to collect
Secondary data (+ limitation) :
- Info collected for another purpose by another researcher eg. gov stats
Limitation: - Substantial variation in quality and accuracy of data
Meta-analysis (+ limitation):
- Combination of results from a number of studies on one topic to provide an overall view
- Prone to publication bias –> researcher may choose to exclude negative or non-significant results
Measure of central tendency (+ examples):
- Central values for a set of data
- Mean
- Median
- Mode
Advantage of using the mean:
Takes all scores into account
Disadvantage of using the mean:
Can be distorted by a single extreme value
Advantage of using the median:
Unaffected by extreme scores
Disadvantage of using the median:
Can be unrepresentative as not all scores are used in calculation
Advantage of using the mode:
Unaffected by extreme scores
Disadvantages of using the mode:
Does not provide any info about other scores in data set
Measure of dispersion (+ examples) :
- How spread out the items are
- Range
- Standard deviation
Range calculation:
- Difference between highest and lowest
- Add 1 (to account for rounding done by researchers)
Advantage of using the range:
Quicker to calculate than standard deviation
Disadvantage of using the range:
Easily distorted by extreme values
Standard deviation:
Average amount score differs from mean
Advantage of using the standard deviation:
Takes all scores into account
Disadvantage of using the standard deviation:
- More difficult to calculate
- Can only be used on interval data
