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Ethical Guidelines for Research With Human Subjects

When determining ethical guidelines forresearch, most experts agree that the cost of conducting the experiment must be weighed against the potential benefit to society the research may provide.

For example: when assessing the efficacy of a medication, is treating a test group of people who need this medication with a placebo worth the negative experiences that group might have during the experiment? Is the discomfort or suffering of a small group worth the larger goal of understanding how and for whom this medication would be most useful? These are some of the ethical considerations that go into the design of an experiment.

While there is still a great deal of debate about ethical guidelines, there are some key components that need to be followed when conducting any type of research with human subjects.

Participation Must Be Voluntary

All ethical research must be conducted using willing participants.Study volunteers should not feel coerced, threatened, or bribed into participation. This becomes especially important for researchers working at universities or prisons, where students and inmates are often encouraged to participate in experiments.

Voluntary participation has a two-fold advantage. Not only does it protect the rights and safety of the test subjects, but it also increases the likelihood of accurate results. Forcing someone to participate in an experiment can result in that person reporting what they think the researchers are hoping for rather than what they are actually experiencing, often in the hopes of their participation in the experiment ending sooner or ingratiating themselves to the researchers to receive a reward.

Informed consentinvolves all study participants being told about every procedure involved in the experiment and informed of any and all potential risks.Consent must be documented in written form. Informed consent ensures that participants know enough about the experiment to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to participate.

For instance, if participating in a medication study, the participant must be informed that they might be receiving a placebo rather than the actual medication. It would be unethical to lead a participant to think that no matter what, they would be receiving medication. It must be documented that the participant understands this and agrees to it.

Obviously, this can present problems in cases where telling the participants the necessary details about the experiment might unduly influence their responses or behaviors in the study. The use of deception in psychology research is allowed in certain instances, but only if the study would be impossible to conduct without the use of deception, if the research will provide some sort of valuable insight, and if the subjects will be debriefed and informed about the study’s true purpose after the data has been collected.

Some examples of ethical deception in psychology research include:

Researchers Must Maintain Participant Confidentiality

Confidentiality is an essential part of any ethical psychology research.Participants need to be guaranteed that identifying information and individual responses will not be shared with anyone who is not involved in the study.

Not only does this protect the anonymity of participants who might not want others to know that they qualified for or wanted to take part in a psychology experiment, but it also ensures that the participants are not purposefully altering their responses and behaviors during the experiment to protect themselves from potential feedback or backlash.

Protecting These Guidelines

1 SourceVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.American Psychological Association.Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct.

1 Source

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.American Psychological Association.Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

American Psychological Association.Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct.

Hannah Owens, LMSW

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