Ethics Activity
Determine which category of IRB review is most appropriate given information about a study
· Identify applicable Belmont principles and decide whether or not a study conforms to them
· Perform a risk-benefit analysis. Evaluate the ethical issues raised by a study.
· Redesign studies to minimize risks.
Review table 3.1 and 3.2 (pgs. 50-52) in your textbook and the rest of chapter 3 to help answer the following questions.
Part 1: IRB Review (6 points total; 1 point each) Examine the following studies and decide whether the study is exempt, eligible for expedited review, or if it needs full review by an IRB committee.
1. As part of a class assignment students will survey other students about sleep and technology use habits.
2. A researcher is interested in the effects of social influence on public compliance. Participants will be seated in a room with two other people and shown images of lines of differing lengths. They will be asked to estimate whether the lines match in length. Unbeknownst to the participant, two confederates of the study will consistently provide wrong answers.
3. A researcher proposes to use data from a colleague’s database to conduct secondary analyses. Specifically, the researcher will gain accesses to coded data regarding work satisfaction and turnover rates.
4. A researcher is interested in the relationship between study habits and grade point average and plans to survey college students.
5. A research study examines judgments about morality. Participants are asked to read scenarios about different crimes and make judgments about how severe the crime is and how much blame the criminal deserves.
6. A researcher explores moods and performance by asking people to watch stand-up comedy clip or horror movie clips subsequent to completing an abilities assessment. The researchers are trying to manipulate the participant’s mood to see how such a manipulation impacts their performance.
Part 2: Belmont Principles (4 points total; 2 points each). Read the description of the study below and decide which if any, of the Belmont principles are applicable based on the provided information. Then, decide whether the study conforms to the ethical principle(s) you chose and provide a justification for your choice.
1. A researcher is planning to conduct a learning study. Based on the number of students and employees in her classes and lab, the researcher feels confident that she will have enough participants needed for the proposed research if she simply recruits among them. But she knows that some colleagues advertise their studies through postings on campus. The researcher is faced with two possible options for recruiting participants: Recruit the students in her upper level classes and the technicians from her lab, and give $5 compensation to participants, or recruit from the general university population (students, faculty and staff) by posting fliers around campus, and give $5 compensation to participants. She decides to use the former method (taken from phrp.nihtraining.com).
2. A researcher seeks to improve treatment for severe migraines that are partially responsive to oral medication. He proposes to test whether acupuncture, in addition to a sufferer’s oral medication, is more effective treatment than oral medication alone. Because women are three times more likely to experience migraines than men (http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/migraine/migraine.htm), he proposes to enroll three times as many women as men. They will be recruited from racially and ethnically diverse communities (take from phrp.nihtraining.com).
Part 3: Risk-Benefit Analysis (5 points total; 2.5 points each). Read the research descriptions below and decide whether the benefits outweigh the risks associated with the design. If you decide that that the study is risky, think of a way to redesign the study to reduce its risk.
1.Participant’s interact for an hour with another person who is actually a confederate. Afterward, both agree to the researcher’s request to return to the lab a week later for a follow up. When the real participant returned they were told that the person they had met a week earlier had died. The researchers then measured reactions to the death of the person. (from Cozby, 2009, p. 63)
a. What ethical issues and/or Belmont principles are raised by the study?
b. Do to the benefits outweigh the risk?
c. How would you redesign the study to minimize the risks?
2.Participants are asked to complete a personality measure. Then, they are given bogus feedback (the so-called personality measures are never really scored) and told that they either possess negative personality traits or possess positive personality traits. Everyone in the study then completes an academic performance measure. Everyone is then debriefed and told about the deception.
a.What ethical issues and/or Belmont principles are raised by the study?
b.Do to the benefits outweigh the risk?
c.How would you redesign the study to minimize the risks?
PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET A GOOD DISCOUNT
