4.2.3.1.5 Ethics, peer review and the economic implications of research Quiz: AQA Psychology, Unit 2

The 20 questions

1. Informed consent means that participants:

   • Must sign a contract agreeing to any procedure the researcher chooses to carry out
   • Are told the exact hypothesis so they can predict the outcome before the study begins
   • Are paid before the study begins, so they are committed to taking part fully
   • Are given enough information about the study to decide whether to take part

2. The right to withdraw means that participants:

   • Lose any payment they have been promised if they decide to leave the study early
   • Can leave the study at any point, and can ask for their data to be removed
   • Must complete the study once they have agreed to take part, whatever happens during it
   • Can only withdraw after the results have been published, when their data are checked

3. Protection from harm in psychological research means that:

   • Participants should not experience physical or psychological harm beyond what they would encounter in daily life
   • Participants must always be exposed to some stress during the study, because real responses only appear under pressure in tests
   • Harm is acceptable if the study is published in a major journal, since the findings then benefit society as a whole
   • Only physical harm needs to be considered by researchers, because psychological effects of a study are too small to matter

4. Confidentiality in research means that:

   • Participants' data are shared freely with the public, including their personal answers and details
   • Participants are told each other's responses, so that everyone in the group can compare results
   • Participants' names are published with their results so that the findings can be credited to them
   • Participants' personal information is kept private and they are not identifiable in reports

5. Deception in research means:

   • Participants are given false results to see how they respond to feedback about themselves
   • Participants lie about their own answers on questionnaires, which the researcher then checks
   • Participants are misled about the aim or procedure, which raises ethical concerns
   • Participants are told the full aim before the study begins, so they can give informed consent

6. Debriefing is the process in which:

   • Participants are instructed to keep the aim secret from others, so the study stays valid
   • Participants are told the true aim of the study and any deception used after taking part
   • Participants are asked to complete a further test before leaving, to measure their final mood
   • Participants are told the results before they consent, so that they can decide to stay

7. Peer review in science is the process in which:

   • The researcher reviews their own work for errors before the report is passed on
   • Participants review the study to decide whether it is fair to the people who took part
   • Experts in the field evaluate a study's quality before it is published
   • A government department approves every study before it starts recruiting people at all

8. A researcher does not tell participants that they will watch a violent video. Which ethical concerns arise?

   • Lack of a control group and a pilot study
   • Deception and lack of informed consent
   • Lack of confidentiality and the right to privacy only
   • Lack of standardisation and random allocation

9. A participant becomes distressed during a study and the researcher stops the procedure. Which ethical principle is most directly applied?

   • Standardisation and operationalisation of the key variables used
   • Random allocation and counterbalancing of the conditions in design
   • Peer review and publication of the findings in a journal
   • The right to withdraw and protection from harm

10. A psychologist publishes a report that includes participants' full names and addresses. Which ethical principle is breached?

    • Confidentiality
    • The right to withdraw
    • Informed consent
    • Debriefing

11. A study on the effects of advertising influences how a company spends its marketing budget. What kind of implication is this?

    • A sampling implication for the study design
    • A reliability implication for the measurement tools
    • An economic implication of psychological research
    • An ethical implication for participant consent

12. Before a study can begin, researchers usually need approval from which body?

    • The participants' employers
    • A national lottery board
    • An ethics committee
    • The publisher of a journal

13. What is the main purpose of peer review in the scientific process?

    • To ensure that the study is cheap to run, so that funding is kept as low as possible
    • To select participants for the next study, from among those who did well in this one
    • To check the quality of methods and conclusions before the findings are published
    • To replace the need for statistical analysis, since reviewers judge the findings directly

14. A researcher pays participants a large fee, so that people in financial difficulty feel unable to refuse. What ethical issue does this raise?

    • Confidentiality, because the payment reveals the names of participants to the funders
    • Standardisation, because the payment changes the procedure that every person receives
    • Coercion, because the payment may pressure people to take part against their judgement
    • Reliability, because the payment changes the measure that the study uses to record data

15. Evaluate the economic implications of psychological research. Which point is most accurate?

    • Research has no economic implications at all, because its findings are never used outside labs
    • Research always reduces costs and never affects policy, since it only tests ideas in theory
    • Research can inform policy and reduce costs, but funders may bias which questions are studied
    • Economic implications only matter for laboratory studies, not for those carried out in the community

16. Why is debriefing required when deception has been used?

    • So that participants understand the true aim and any distress caused by the deception can be addressed
    • So that the participants can be paid for their time, which is the main purpose of the debrief session
    • So that the researcher can change the data afterwards, once the participants have been informed of the aim
    • So that the study can be repeated without ethical approval, since participants have now been told the aim

17. Explain how BPS guidelines reduce the risk of psychological harm in research.

    • By requiring researchers to assess and minimise risks, and to protect participants from distress
    • By guaranteeing that every study is published in a major journal, which then checks the safety of its methods
    • By ensuring that every study uses deception to hide any harm from the participants involved
    • By removing all participants who might feel stressed, so that the sample has no distressed people

18. A researcher argues that deception is justified because it produces more valid results. What is the main ethical counter-argument?

    • Deception is legally required in every study, because the law demands misleading procedures
    • Deception undermines informed consent and participants' trust, even when it improves validity
    • Deception always produces invalid results, so it can never improve the quality of any study
    • Deception has no effect on participants, so it carries no ethical risk for the people involved

19. A study offers extra course credit to students who take part. Which ethical concern is most relevant?

    • Students may receive results that are too precise to be meaningful for their own studies
    • Students may feel pressured to participate in order to gain credit
    • Students' results may be published without permission, which is a privacy concern for them
    • Students cannot be given any information about the study, so they cannot judge it fairly

20. Why do ethical guidelines require that participants are told they can withdraw at any time?

    • To allow the researcher to keep data from those who leave, so that the sample is complete
    • To increase the number of participants who stay until the end, to improve data quality
    • To make sure the study finishes on time, so that the funding period is not exceeded
    • To ensure that participation remains voluntary and that they are not pressured to continue

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