Ethics in Research, APA report

Ethics in Research
Chapter 1
Waseem Fayyaz
Quantiative Research
Preston

Outline:
1. Introduction to ethics in research
2. Ethical issues and human participants in
research
3. Ethical issues and nonhuman subjects in
research
4. Ethical issues and scientific integrity

1. Introduction to ethics in research
 you must accept the responsibility to behave
ethically toward those who will be affected
by your research
 ethics is the study of proper action
 research ethics concerns the responsibility
of researchers to be honest and respectful
to all individuals who may be affected by
their research studies or their reports of the
studies’ results

2. Ethical issues and human
participants in research
 Historical highlights of treatment of human
participants
– World War II – brutal experiments performed on
prisoners in Nazi concentration camps
– 1947 Nuremberg trial with experimenters who
conducted those experiments
– as a result of that trial – Nuremberg Code has been
established

 Historical highlights of treatment of human
participants (cont.)
– Milgram obedience study (Milgram, 1963)
 subjects instructed to use electric shock to punish
other individuals when they made errors in a learning
task
 participants were administering what appeared to be
dangerously strong and painful shocks
 no real shocks were used in the study
 although the participants in this study sustained no
physical harm, they suffered shame and
embarrassment for having behaved inhumanely
toward their fellow human beings

 American psychological association (APA)
Guidelines
– www.apa.org/ethics/code.html
– APA Ethics Code contains ten ethical
standards, and you should be completely
familiar with all of them before beginning any
research with human participants

Guidelines (major ethical issues)
– No harm
 the researcher is obligated to protect participants
from physical or psychological harm
– Psychological harm – participants may feel increased
anxiety, anger, lower self-esteem especially in situations
where they feel that they have been cheated or insulted
 any risk of harm must be justified
 participants must be informed of any potential risks

– Informed consent
 human participants should be given complete information
about the research and their role in it
 they should understand the information and then voluntarily
decide whether or not to participate
– information – if not possible to provide the subject with
information about the purpose of the study we can explain
to him at least exactly what will be done
– understanding – some participants may not be competent to
understand the research (e.g. children), therefore, it is
necessary to provide the information to a parent or a guardian
– voluntary participation – participants decide to participate of
their own free will (no obligation because of a teacher or a
professor asked them to do so)

– deception – informed consent can not be obtain before
the study
 to obtain unbiased results researchers must sometimes use
deception because participants may adjust their own levels of
performance in an attempt to satisfy the experimenter
 Passive deception (or omission) is the withholding or omitting of
information (researcher intentionally does not tell participants
some information about the study)
 Active deception (or commission) is the presenting of
misinformation about the study to participants (misleading
participants about the specific purpose of the study)

– guidelines for a study involving deception:
 the deception must be justified in terms of some benefit that
outweighs the risk to the participants
 the researcher can not conceal from the participants any
significant aspects of the study that is expected to cause
physical pain or severe emotional stress
 the researcher must provide the participant with debriefing that
explains the true nature of the experiment, including the use
and purpose of deception after the study is completed

– Confidentiality
 is the practice of keeping strictly secret and private
the information or measurements obtained from an
individual during a research study
– Anonymity
 is the practice of ensuring that an individual’s name
is not directly associated with the information or
measurements obtained from that individuals (e.g.
using codes)

The Institutional Review board (IRB)
– most human-participant research must be reviewed and
approved by a group of individuals (scientists and non-
scientists) not directly affiliated with the specific
research study
– the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS) requires review of all human-participant research
conducted by government agencies and institutions
receiving government funds
– IRB typically requires that researchers submit a written
research proposal that addresses each of the seven
criteria of IRB (minimization of risk to participants,
reasonable risk in relation to benefits, equitable
selection, informed consent, documentation of informed
consent, data monitoring, privacy and confidentiality)
 Category I (exempt review) – anonymous survey on innocuous
topic
 Category II (expedited review) – minimal risk to participants
 Category III (full review) – special populations, deception,
intervention, invasive measurement

3. Ethical issues and nonhuman
subjects in research
 the first ethical question is whether nonhuman subjects
should be used at all in behavioral research
 APA guidelines for the use and treatment of nonhuman
subjects in research
– animals must be treated humanely, qualified individuals must
conduct research, the research must be justified and the
researcher has a responsibility to minimize discomfort or harm
 institutions that conduct research with animals have an
animal research review board called the Institutional
Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)
– Committee consists of a veterinarian, at least one scientist
experience in animal research and a one member of public with
no affiliation with the institution

4. Ethical issues and scientific
integrity
 two ethical issues relevant to the written
reports of the research study
– fraud
 is an explicit effort of a researcher to deceive and
misrepresent the data
 fraud needs to be distinguished from an error
– error is an honest mistake that occurs in the research
process
 safeguards against fraud
– replication of studies by different scientists
– peer review when a researcher submits a research article for
publication (editor of the journal and a few experts in the field
critically review the paper in extreme detail)

4. Ethical issues and scientific
integrity
 two ethical issues relevant to the written reports of
the research study (cont.)
– plagiarism
 is the representation of someone else’s ideas or words as
one’s own, it is unethical!!!
 reference citations must be included in your paper whenever
someone else’s ideas or work has influenced your thinking and
writing
 whenever you use direct quotations or even paraphrase
someone else’s work, you need to give them credit
 include a complete list of references at the end of the paper

Writing an APA-Style Research
Report

Outline:
1. The goal of a research report
2. General APA guidelines for writing style
and format
3. The elements of an APA-style research
report
4. Submitting a manuscript for publication
5. Writing a research proposal

 basic purpose of a good research report is
to provide three kinds of information about
the research study:
– what was done (detailed description of your
research project)
– what was found (objective description of the
outcome)
– how your research study is related to other
knowledge in the area

 a research report is a very structured
document subdivided into separate, well-
defined segments, and each segment has
a specified content
 formal style and structure is determined by
the guidelines presented in the Publication
Manual of the American Psychological
Association (5th edition, 2001)

2. General APA guidelines for writing
style and format
 the goal is to provide simple, straightforward
description and explanation of your research
study
– impersonal style (don’t say ‘I believe..’, ‘I
think’)
– verb tense (past for the description of the
research and results, present tense in
discussion section)
– avoid biased language (age, gender, ethnicity)
– citations (e.g. Jones, 1998)

2. General APA guidelines for writing
style and format
 guidelines for typing and word-processing
– double spaced
– no more than 27 lines of text per page
– at least 1’’ margin on all sides
– typeface – 12-point Times Roman or 12-point
Courier
– each page of the manuscript, except for the
figures, is numbered and identified with a page
header

3. The elements of an APA-style
research report
 title page
– title page is the first page of a research report
manuscript and contains the title of the paper, the
author names and affiliations, and the running head
– a running head is an abbreviated title for a research
report, containing a maximum of 50 characters, it
appears on the title page of the manuscript and at the
top of the pages in a published article
 abstract
– abstract is a brief summary of the research study,
totaling no more than 120 words, the abstract focuses
on what was done and what was found in the study

research report
 Introduction
– is the first major section of text in a research report, it
presents a logical development of the research
question, including a review of the relevant background
literature, a statement of the research question and
hypothesis, and a brief description of the methods used
to answer the question or test the hypothesis
 method
– the method section of a research report describes how
the study was conducted, including the subjects or
participants, the apparatus or materials, and the
procedures used

research report
 results
– results section of a research report presents a summary
of the data and the statistical analysis
 discussion
– restates the hypothesis, summarizes the results, and
then presents a discussion of the interpretations,
implications, and possible applications of the results
 references
– the reference section is a listing of complete references
for all sources of information cited in the report,
organized alphabetically by the last name of the first
author

research report
 appendix
– an appendix may be included as a means of presenting
detailed information about the research (e.g. the
questionnaire that you developed and used in the
research or list of items used in the research)
 author note
– details about the author (university, grant support,
acknowledgment, contact person)
 tables and figures
– tables and figures supplement the text, they should not
duplicate information in the text

4. Submitting a manuscript for
publication
 three steps to follow:
– select a journal that is appropriate for the topic
of your research report
– consult the journal’s instructions to authors for
specific submission requirements
– enclose a cover letter along with the manuscript
to the journal editor

5. Writing a research proposal
 a research proposal is a written report presenting
the plan and underlying rationale of a future
research study
 a proposal includes a review of the relevant
background literature, an explanation of how the
proposed study is related to other knowledge in
the area, a description of how the planned
research will be conducted, and a description of
the possible results
 writing a research proposal is very much like
writing a research report (you have to follow the
general APA style guidelines discussed earlier)

Ethics in Research, APA report

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