Research Design Methods and Ethics in Psychology Essay

Although ethical values and principles guide all of the American Psychological Association’s (APA, 2017) ethical codes, there are different ways of interpreting and applying those ethical principles depending on the situation. Clinical and counseling psychologists have different ethical guidelines for their profession. For example, there are different ethical principles related to clients being treated by psychologists in counseling sessions versus the standards for conducting psychological research with human participants. Both human subjects and clients in counseling should be guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity, and both clients and participants in research should receive informed consent related to the terms of their relationship with the counselor/researcher. However, due to the unique circumstances surrounding the relationship between counselor and client, the APA (2017) offers much more extensive guidelines for sexual misconduct and other abuses of power in the client-counselor relationship. The ethical guidelines for research cover some issues that might not be relevant to counselors such as the need to maintain ethical standards for publishing research and reporting results.

My future career as a research psychologist will take into account the APA’s (2017) evolving code of ethics. Section 8 on research and publication covers issues related to informed consent of participants but also to honesty in reporting results. Whereas honesty is of course expected of counselors, there is a difference between the work that a researcher does and that of a counselor. For example, Section 8.14 covers the ethical parameters of sharing results of research. I cannot withhold information because it might reflect poorly on me or invalidate my hypotheses. We as research psychologists are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the profession by contributing to the growing body of research, validating existing studies, and conducting studies using valid and ethical methodologies.

References

American Psychological Association (APA, 2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. Retrieved online: http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx

Unit 2 Discussion

In this scenario, the null hypothesis would be that the students’ motivation level, measured by numbers of responses to the forum, would neither increase nor decrease as a result of any of the different interventions. The research hypothesis A would be that the experimental group that receives digital badges for contributing posts of three or more lines will yield more overall posts to the forums in general versus the participants in the control group. Using a true experimental design as Skidmore (2008) describes it, there would be a control group and an experimental group as suggested by the case study. Random assignment and double-blindness would also need to be present, meaning that neither the researchers nor the participants would know who was being assigned to which group. Unfortunately, in the experiment described in the case study, the researchers decided to not achieve double-blindness, with threats to internal validity. It would be preferable to have a true random assignment and double-blindness. To achieve…