Applications Exercises Research in Psych, 7e: Study Guide, Chapter 2 2-1
Role-Playing an IRB
Read each of the following descriptions of research carefully and consider the ethical issues involved. After each description, identify and describe any potential ethical problems that would need to be resolved before the study could be approved by an IRB. In particular, keep these questions in mind:
· What is the level of risk to participants and what specific risks exist in the study?
· Is the value of the study sufficient to offset any potential risk to participants?
· What safeguards must be in place to protect the participants?
· Is there anything in particular that ought to be stressed in the consent form?
· Would some individuals be unsuitable as participants in the study?
1. A researcher is interested in what makes some people persevere more than others. She develops a procedure in which participants will be asked to solve a series of 10 anagrams (scrambled letters that have to be rearranged to form a word). Participants are given 20 seconds to solve each anagram. Then at the end of 20 seconds, they are asked if they want another 20 seconds, and strongly encouraged to keep going. This continues until the anagram is solved or the participant gives up (i.e., no longer perseveres). To examine the effects of “social comparison” on performance, some participants are told that most students usually solve all 10 problems, but that some of the anagrams are harder than others. Others are told nothing about how typical students perform. Participants are tested individually. What they don’t know is that anagrams #3, #5, and #9 have NO solution – they are unsolvable. These of course are the anagrams of interest to the researcher, who wants to know how soon people will give up trying to solve them.
Your analysis:
2. A researcher wishes to see if feelings of reduced competence will make people more willing to volunteer for some task they might ordinarily avoid. He designs a study in which participants are led to believe they will be trying to identify concepts. They are shown several sets of slides and for each set, they are asked to write down what the items on the slides have in common. After doing this ten times, participants are told the results. In particular, they are told that most college students average about 6-7 correct, but they only had 2 correct answers. Participants in a second group (perceived competence not reduced) are told they had 8 correct. All participants are tested individually. On the way out of the lab, participants are approached by another student, apparently unconnected with the concept identification experiment, and asked if they would be willing to give blood. The experiment ends after the participant responds to the request (i.e., no actual blood drawn). The researcher hypothesizes that reduced-competence participants will be more likely to volunteer, in order to give their self-esteem a boost.
Your analysis:
3. A researcher believes that if people are feeling moderately anxious, then adding a sense of being crowding can heighten their anxiety. She designs a study in which subjects sign up for a study on the effects of anxiety on memory. They are informed that shock will be present in the study. One group is told that when they make a mistake on the memory test, they will receive a small shock (“it will feel like your skin is buzzing”). A second group is told that the shocks will not be severe but they will be moderately painful (but won’t cause permanent tissue damage). Half of the participants in each group are asked to wait for the study to begin in a waiting room that is no bigger than a closet. Remaining participants are not crowded – they wait in a much larger waiting room. After spending 10 minutes in the waiting rooms, participants are asked to fill out an “anxiety” survey, and their blood pressure and pulse are recorded. No memory experiment occurs and no shock is administered. The researcher expects the maximum anxiety to be felt by those expecting moderate shock and waiting in the closet-sized room.
Your analysis:
4. A researcher believes that undeclared students whose parents have divorced within the past five years will take longer to decide on a major and will show higher levels of depression and anxiety than (a) undeclared students whose parents are not divorced and (b) undeclared students whose parents divorced more than five years ago. He sends a survey to all of the university’s seniors who were known (Registrar’s records) to have begun their college careers without having declared a major. The survey (a) asks them to indicate when they declared a major, (b) includes a series of items designed to measure their current levels of depression and anxiety, and (c) asks a series of questions about their parents’ marital status and the relationship between the student and his or her parents.
Your analysis:
Feedback
There are no absolutely correct answers to these IRB proposals. They provide food for thought and give you a chance to think apply how to apply the code in real research situations. Nonetheless, here are some potential risks to consider for each of the four situations.
1. Especially for participants in the condition in which they think other students are solving the impossible anagrams, but to some degree for all participants, there will be a fair amount of stress and frustration experienced when they encounter the key anagrams. The consent form should perhaps make a special point about reminding participants that that they stop the experiment at any time, and debriefing will be important as well.
2. This is a problem similar to number one, in that participants are being made to feel stress, in this case a lowering of their sense of competence. The IRB might also consider whether another volunteer activity (other than giving blood) might accomplish the same goals. In general, the IRB will have to look closely at the relative value of the research, compared to the level of deception involved.
3. The informed consent procedure will have to be clear about the shock levels to be expected (even though no participant actually receives any shock) and of course the debriefing must be thorough. The researcher also should consider some pre-screening of participants. Those with any degree of claustrophobia should probably be screened out.
4. The main problem here is maintaining the anonymity of participants. The IRB will be looking for specifics about how the researcher will maintain confidentiality and, if the survey is to be done by mail, how some form of debriefing will occur. Also, the researcher might be asked to provide a means for follow-up and care in the event the survey creates a high level of stress, especially for those students of recently divorced parents.
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