Factual And Fictional Descriptions Research

Factual And Fictional Descriptions Research

Factual And Fictional Descriptions Research

APA Code of Ethics Activity

University of Phoenix

PSY 335—Research Methods

Directions:

Consider the following factual and fictional descriptions of research. Select the APA ethical guideline for researchers that the research violates, if any.

Exercise 1

You are a student in a beginning psychology class and one of the assignments in the course is that you have to participate in your professor’s study on eye tracking when reading technical articles. The participation in the study is required and has a value of 25 points.

Is this a violation of APA research guidelines?

Yes, it violates Principal 8.01—Institutional Approval

Yes, it violates Principal 8.04—Client/Patient, Student, and Subordinate Research Participants

Yes, it violates Principal 8.06—Offering Inducements for Research Participation

No, it is not a violation of an APA research guideline

Exercise 2

A researcher videotapes patients to see their reaction to wait time for appointments. The patients do not know they have been taped and were not asked for permission for the tapes to be filmed.

Is this a violation of APA research guidelines?

Yes, it violates Principal 8.03—Informed Consent for Recording Voices or Images in Research

Yes, it violates Principal 8.05—Dispensing with Informed Consent for Research

Yes, it violates Principal 8.07—Deception in Research

No, it is not a violation of an APA research guideline

Exercise 3

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a project conducted by the US Public Health Service in Alabama. The American Government promised 400 men free treatment for bad blood. The treatment was never given to the men and was purposely withheld. The study sample was made up of poor African American men who were not aware they were being studied for the effects of syphilis.

Is this a violation of APA research guidelines?

Yes, it violates Principal 8.02—Informed Consent to Conduct Research

Yes, it violates Principal 8.05—Dispensing with Informed Consent for Research

Yes, it violates Principal 8.06—Offering Inducements for Research Participation

No, it is not a violation of an APA research guideline

Exercise 4

A study involved a group of children diagnosed with mental retardation, who lived at a state hospital for children with mental retardation. The children were deliberately infected with a contagious disease. The study’s purpose was to study the history of the disease when left untreated and later to assess the effects of a new medication as a treatment. Parents were encouraged to enroll their children in the study in exchange for admission of their child to the state hospital (which was deliberately short of space).

Is this a violation of APA research guidelines?

Yes, it violates Principal 8.04—Client/Patient, Student, or Subordinate Research Participation

Yes, it violates Principal 8.06—Offering Inducements for Research Participation

Yes, it violates Principle 8.07—Deception in Research

No, it is not a violation of an APA research guideline

Exercise 5

A psychologist is conducting research and has approval from his medical school’s Internal Review Board (IRB). The original submission to the IRB stated the study would use written informed consent forms. Later on, the researcher decided to use oral informed consent instead of written consent forms. The researcher decided that even though he had changed the procedures, he did not need to clear this change through the IRB and proceeded with the research project.

Is this a violation of APA research guidelines?

Yes, it violates Principal 8.01—Institutional Approval

Yes, it violates Principal 8.02—Informed Consent to Conduct Research

Yes, it violates Principal 8.05—Dispensing with Informed Consent for Research

No, it is not a violation of an APA research guideline

Exercise 6

A psychologist is conducting research and conducts phone interviews with 500 participants. The project interviews take 7 months to complete and the researcher decides it will be too much trouble to contact each participant after the study to share information with them, so they never receive any information after their initial interview.

Is this a violation of APA research guidelines?

Yes, it violates Principal 8.03—Informed Consent for Recording Voices or Images in Research

Yes, it violates Principal 8.05—Dispensing with Informed Consent for Research

Yes, it violates Principal 8.08—Debriefing

No, it is not a violation of an APA research guideline

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.