7-1 Discussion: Ethical Concerns

Need help with my Psychology question – I’m studying for my class.

Explain the ethical implications involved in your proposal, including any ethical considerations related to the problem, intervention (if appropriate), research methods, and design. Include in your discussion a brief description of the population of interest and what kinds of ethical implications might be involved with this population. For example, are you working with kids, older adults, inmates, or other special populations? Are you working with people who might have suffered a trauma of some sort? You must explain the needs of your potential population and how diversity may play a role (e.g., different cultural needs).

If you think your study will have limited ethical implications, explain how you have evaluated the topic for ethical considerations, including the guidelines you have used. Finally, identify ways to mitigate or address any ethical issues.

In your responses to your classmates, discuss any other potential concerns or ethical implications you see.

Refer to the Capstone Discussion Rubric for directions on completing these discussions.

MY RESEARCH TOPIC: Assessing the relationship between depression and anxiety from the perspective student academic performance

Research Aim: Emotional disturbance is considered to be a psychological element that can lead to the deterioration of the daily activities of students. Since, academic achievements are an integral dimension of students’ lives, depression, anxiety and other forms of emotional disturbance might lead to poor academic performance. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to assess the relationship between depression and anxiety on student academic performance.

PREVIOUS MILESTONES AND DISCUSSIONS ATTACHED FOR YOU TO USE AS REFERENCE!

AFTER COMPLETING THE INITIAL POST, PLEASE ALSO RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING TWO STUDENTS REGARDING THE SAME TOPIC. PLEASE RESPOND IN A POSITIVE MANNER WITH A MINIMUM OF 150 WORDS EACH!

STUDENT ONE:

Ethics is a norm that is used to distinguish what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behavior. Ethics in research is important as it helps to ensure that the research promotes truth, values cooperation, shows accountability to the public, builds public support, and promotes moral and social values (Resnik, 2015). The ethical implications involved in my proposal are based on language, accessibility, communication, and body language. Because my research is utilizing both a questionnaire and interview language is very important. One ethical issue can be using the wrong language for the audience or using a language that can be misconstrued. The US has a large diversity of cultures and languages. To be able to remain ethical and fair I will ensure that the language used is approved by the ethics committee prior to use. I will be using an online platform and require participants to be able to have access to the internet, this can be considered an ethical issue as some may feel that they are not included because they are unable to access the questionnaire.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) questionnaire used to measure burnout has already been approved as an ethical questionnaire so I will only need to work on language with the interview process. Communication will be used both electronically and face to face so I will ensure that consent forms are administered prior to the questionnaire and again prior to the interview to ensure that participants are completely aware of the process and how the information will be used. Ensuring the security of participants, staff, and of the information received is extremely important. According to Curwood et al. (2019) in today’s world research is no longer done simply face to face but has now delved into the online world and researchers must understand the importance of protecting participants in these online environments to ensure the research stays ethical and does not eschew the results. Understanding that everyone thinks and acts differently it an important aspect to remember when conducting research. The language and communication used must be understood correctly to ensure valid results and to ensure ethical implications do not arise from misinformation. Body language is another part of my research that can cause ethical implications. One must be flexible, understanding, and knowledgeable in the field to ensure proper interviews that can be used for research.

Another ethical implication that I found through research is the collaboration of the researcher and those that fund the research. Because of the extensiveness of time and money to conduct the research, I will most likely need to look for funding, and this can bring its own ethical implications. According to Mauthner (2002) researchers need to take care when agreeing to restrictions placed on the research by those that fund their research as these restrictions can be unethical and may cause legal issues if the contract is broken. One should not base their solely on ethics but one should understand the importance of ethics and how it can impact your research.

Curwood, J. S., Magnifico, A. M., Lammers, J. C., & Stornaiuolo, A. (2019). Ethical Dilemmas within Online Literacy Research. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 68(1), 293–313.

Edwards, R. & Mauthner, M. (2002). Ethics and feminist research: theory and practice. In Mauthner, M., Birch, M., Jessop, J., & Miller, T. Ethics in qualitative research (pp. 15-31). London: SAGE Publications Ltd doi: 10.4135/9781849209090

Resnik, D. B. (2015, December 1). What Is Ethics in Research & Why Is It Important? Retrieved from https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/whatis/index.cfm

STUDENT TWO:

The data from my research is a collection of qualitative data from studies and the data is collected from secondary sources of information including physical fitness/activity and human health journals. Qualitative research is particularly challenging in that there is no statistical analysis in the studies, the researcher has to interpret from his or her evaluation and observation (Sanjari, Bahramnezhad, Fomani, Shoghi, & Cheraghi, 2014). Hence, it is important that the researchers have the necessary skills and comply strictly to the set of ethics in the studies for better extraction of reliable data so not to mislead the results. The important ethical concerns considering while conducting qualitative research are protection of participates through informed consent process, participant anonymity, strength of qualitative research methods used, potential impact on the volunteers and well-defined use of practical guidelines and protocols in all stages of the studies (Richard & Schwartz, 2002). For me, there was a great selection of qualitative research using qualitative methods; however not all of them mentioned the challenges of ethical issues surrounding qualitative research. The articles that I selected to support my project, all have some mention of ethical challenges and fell within the guideline points above.

Another consideration of my project is that my data is collected from secondary sources. According to Heaton (1998), “the use of existing data collected is for the purpose of a prior study, in order to pursue a research interest which is distinct from that of the original work” (Heaton, 1998, p. 1). One of my concerns with secondary data is that I need to ensure that I collected data to answer the same research question. I had to make sure that I evaluated the data for certain criteria such as the methodology of data collection, purpose of the data collection and its content. I needed to ensure that I do not manipulate what I read or misinterpret the result differently from the researchers’ intent for my own opportuneness. Due to the convenience of the internet and e-library, articles and journals is freely available to all, so the permission for further use and analysis is implied. But I am ethically obliged to acknowledge the ownership from where the original data was collected – i.e. proper citing.

There seem to be a lot of mention among scholars for the need to formulate “specific guidelines for data reusage, data protection and anonymization and issues of consent in secondary data analysis” (Tripathy, 2013, p. 1479). I have not come across any journals that I felt violated the code of ethics. The participants were not identified other than gender or age or what type of job they did, it seems to me the academia world is quite ethical and honourable.

References

Heaton. J. (2008). Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data: An Overview. Historical Social Research/ Historische Sozialforschung, 33(3 (125)), 33. https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/eds/C…

Richards, H.M. & Schwartz, L.J. (2002). Ethics of qualitative research: are there special issues for health services research? Family Practice. Volume 19, Issue 2, Pages 135–139. https://doi.org/10.1093/fampra/19.2.135

Sanjari, M., Bahramnezhad, F., Fomani, F. K., Shoghi, M., & Cheraghi, M. A. (2014). Ethical challenges of researchers in qualitative studies: the necessity to develop a specific guideline. Journal of medical ethics and history of medicine, 7, 14. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4263394/

Tripathy, J. P. (2013). Secondary Data Analysis: Ethical Issues and Challenges. Iranian Journal of Public Health, 42(12), 1478–1479. https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/eds/C…