Dealing with ethical issues

Ethical issues are those which take into account the well-being of participants both whilst they are involved in the research and afterwards. In previous times, little consideration was given to ethical treatment of participants and this meant that many people who were involved in research may have been permanently harmed by their involvement. The British Psychological Society (BPS) has guidelines to help researchers ensure that their research is as ethical as possible.

BPS involvement ensures that serious consideration must be given to how participants will be protected whilst they are involved in research and all researchers must stringently adhere to a set of ethical guidelines. The main considerations that must be taken into account are:

• Informed consent
• Deception
• Confidentiality
• Right to withdraw
• Protection of participants.

Informed consent

Wherever it is possible to do so, researchers must always get the consent of the participants who are taking part in the research. This means that they must be told, as far as possible, what the research is about before it starts and what role they will play in it – therefore simply asking the person if they would like to be involved, and getting a “yes” answer, is not enough.

Adults who are 18 years and over can consent themselves to take part in research. Children can also take part but must have a parent or guardian’s permission to do so.

Presumptive consent comes about when the researcher, for some reason, cannot get the informed consent of the participants and so they ask a group of people who are similar to the participants if they would consent to being involved if they were asked. If the ‘alternative’ group agrees then presumptive consent will be taken. However, this is not a guarantee that the original participants would have agreed nor that how people assume they will behave in a study reflects how they would actually behave when it took place.

In order for consent to be ‘informed’ the potential participants must be told the following:

• That their commitment to taking part is purely voluntary and that they can withdraw, with no detrimental effect, at any time
• The purpose of the research
• Any potential risks (although these should be very small in psychological research)
• What the procedures will be and what they will be expected to do
• What benefit the research will bring
• How long they will be involved
• Their rights in relation to confidentiality and anonymity
• They must provide a contact number for emergencies that may arise (either linked to the research or not).

Deception

Sometimes, it will be necessary to deceive participants, otherwise their behaviour may change and affect the results of the research. Deception means that participants are deliberately misled or not told about certain aspects of the research. It also means that participants are unable to give truly informed consent, as they are not fully aware of all aspects of the research.

Deception should only occur if the researcher has no alternative at all and, even then, participants must be told about the true nature of the research in a debrief, which will be discussed at the end of this section.

The researcher should be in no doubt that deceiving the participants will cause no harm to them and the researcher should have a good indication of whether this will happen prior to the start of the research. If distress is caused by deception then the study will be deemed as unacceptable.

Confidentiality

An assurance of confidentiality should make up part of the participants’ agreement to giving informed consent to the study in which they will be taking part. Many aspects of research will collate data which is personal or sensitive, and people are only likely to want to take part in it if they are assured confidentiality.

Any data which is collected should ensure that all participants remain anonymous and they should not be identifiable from descriptions or from photographs.

If data is going to be shared with other researchers then this must be specified to participants before they consent to taking part in the research.

Right to withdraw

Anyone who has agreed to take part in research should be assured of their right to withdraw from it at any time. No one should be forced to continue against their will and it should be made clear to potential participants, from the outset, that withdrawing from the study will have no detrimental effects on its outcome.

This ethical issue is especially pertinent in field or natural experiments where people may not know that they are being observed and therefore cannot give consent to do so before the research begins.

Protection of participants

The protection of participants should be of utmost concern for all researchers when they are putting studies together. Researchers should never deliberately harm their participants either physically or psychologically, and for this reason there are several things that the researchers can do to reduce the possibility as much as possible:

• Ensure that deception is only applied if there is absolutely no other alternative
• Ensure that participants do not endure any unnecessary stress, particularly stress which they may not have been warned about before the start of the research
• Ensure that participants never feel embarrassed or humiliated when taking part in the research
• Vulnerable groups such as elderly people, children and those with learning disabilities should be given specialist care when taking part in research
• Ensure that participants are signposted to further assistance if it does transpire that some form of distress has been caused

Ways of dealing with ethical issues

One way of dealing with most ethical issues is to ensure that participants are thoroughly debriefed after the research has taken place. During a debriefing session, participants must be told the following information:

• The true nature of the study, if there has been some element of deception
• How the data collected will be used
• What the expected results would be
• Offer the opportunity to ask questions
•  Signpost any participants to further help if it emerges that they have been distressed by the research.

Debriefing should help any anxieties that participants may have had during the research and they should leave a debriefing session feeling as though they are confident that they have done the right thing in giving informed consent to take part and for their results to be used.