Hi everyone, and welcome to your second Q&A session.

First of all, apologies for the error I made.

Hopefully you've seen the announcement that I made.

I'm not sure if someone was expecting me there, although I was connected.

I was just delivering a Q&A session that will be delivered to you in a few weeks time.

You will get the recording of this as soon as possible.

And hopefully this will not happen again.

As I said, I have 2 versions of the module running.

So we are going to have this session today.

So Today we're going to have a recap of Unit 1 and 2, and we are going to focus on ethics as well.

I will briefly summarise it today so that you know what I meant with the questions that I asked you.

If you want to do it, it's good practice.

Also, it gives you an insight on ethics and how ethics are addressed in research articles.

This is just a reminder of your deadlines, I'm not going to focus on this for now because there is still some time to go for your first formative deadline on 2nd of October.

So overview of the module, should have covered the research process and ethical considerations for psychological research.

And given the error, you should now be in unit 3 with sampling and looking at sampling.

We'll have a recap of this in the next Q&A session.

Overview of the Q&A, so This is our second Q&A, our next Q&A that will be a focus on literature review.

I will post an example of a research article that we are going to look at together during the session and I will ask you to read it beforehand so that you can come to the Q&A prepared.

So this is an overview of how, of the research process in general, being qualitative or quantitative, this is the research process.

You will get some hands on experience with some, with parts of this process and then for your final projects, for your dissertation, you will get experience in the overall research process.

So when we are planning research, so obviously the first thing that we need to think about is the topic.

So the research area could be developmental, cognitive, social, clinical.

My research area, for example, is cognitive psychology.

And then within that research area, we want to look at the area of interest.

In my case, cognitive psychology, my area of interest within cognitive psychology was memory retrieval.

And then, although this is quite a broad topic, memory retrieval, but then within the area of interest, then we start to conduct our literature review.

We start to conduct our literature review.

So here's where we look at the literature, what's already been done in our area of interest.

So we compare and contrast the literature and then we start to think about whether there is a gap in the literature.

And that will inform our research question.

Our research question will then inform our methods.

So are we going to use qualitative methods?

Are we going to use quantitative methods?

Qualitative methods and keep this in mind because it will be very useful for your first assignment as well as your second assignment.

So qualitative methods are about observing how and why people behave a certain way.

So it's about each individual's experience.

We're interested in each individual's experience with the qualitative methods.

Whereas with quantitative methods, we are measuring phenomenon using a more objective approach, for example, using number and statistics, and we try to generalise the findings from a sample of the population.

We'll look at quantitative methods later on in the module, so do not worry too much about this for now, but it's good to start looking at the difference between the 2 methods.

In my case, the area of interest is memory retrieval.

Most studies in the area are quantitative studies.

So my research expertise is quantitative methods rather than qualitative.

There are some studies that I've looked at that have done qualitative research in memory, but that is quite uncommon, or you might have, which can happen sometimes in memory research as well, you can have mixed methods.

So this is where you combine qualitative and quantitative methods.

This becomes a little bit complicated, a little bit challenging.

So I would avoid using it, for example, for your final project.

Not that you have to think about that for now, but mixed methods can be a bit tricky.

Then, once we have our methods, we need to think about our research design.

Now, if we are a qualitative researcher, if we're doing qualitative research, then We have different types of designs.

We have ethnographies, we have interviews, focus groups, diaries.

So it depends on our research area and depends on our research question as well.

If we do quantitative methods, then we have experimental, longitudinal and cross-sectional design.

I'm not going to focus too much on this because we'll come back to this when we look at quantitative methods and I also recommend in your readings that You don't focus too much on this for now, just keep it for later, because otherwise you're going to get confused.

The first assignment is qualitative methods, so maybe focus on that more.

This is where we manipulate 1 or more variables to measure their effect on another variable.

For example, lab experiments usually adopt this experimental design.

In my research, I adopted an experimental design.

Longitudinal research, quite often using developmental psychology, so studying, for example, the development of children, how children behave or the relationship between the children and their mother.

This is repeated observations of the same variable.

For example, looking at babies' maternal attachment over the first 12 months of life and then maternal attachment is measured at 3, 6, 9, 12 months.

Again, it generally adopts a more objective approach.

And then we have cross-sectional correlational design, and this is where we measure the relationship or the association between variables at the same point in time.

For example, the relationship between IQ and exam performance.

So this gives you an idea of the different experimental, sorry, the different research designs and quantitative methods.

Then once we've decided our design, we need to look at sampling.

So we need to decide who our participants will be.

That depends on so many different factors.

It could be your research question, it could be the area of interest, it could be the topic, it could be so many different factors.

But ideally, we would choose our participants based on age, gender, nationality, any other characteristics that might be informed by the research question or the background literature.

How many participants need to be recruited?

Qualitative methods, typically small sample size, and you will understand why when you start your qualitative project, your qualitative report, it is time consuming.

Quantitative methods, we typically have a larger sample size.

And this is because the sample size will also inform the statistical analysis, and it can also change the power of the statistical analysis.

We'll look at this a little bit more in unit 3 and more in unit 11.

So the second part of the module, don't worry too much about it for now.

Then we have, once we have our sampling, we also need to decide how we're going to collect our data.

And this is determined by the type of research design.

So if we have a qualitative study, we've decided that research design, we're going to use interviews.

If we have a quantitative study, we've decided that we have an experimental design, are we going to use a computer task or are we going to use something different to collect our data?

And then we have, so we collect the data and then we analyse the data and interpret it.

You will get some experience in data analysis and interpretation within this module for both qualitative and quantitative methods.

And then ideally, well, and then after this we put the data together, we put the study together, we put it in the format of a report, and we write it up in the format of a report.

We'll look at this in more detail in unit 8 and 17, where we look at qualitative report writing, unit 8, quantitative report writing, unit 17.

And then ideally, not that you have to do it for this module, ideally we would publish our study in a particular journal depending on our area.

Now we've looked at the research process, we looked at what we need to do or what the steps are for the research process.

1 very important thing before we can start our research is the ethics.

So we need to have ethical approval by an organisation, an external body, before we can conduct our research.

We need to protect our participants or animals if we're conducting animal research.

Now we have in the UK, The ethics are based on this BPS, British Psychological Society Code of Ethics and Conduct, and it's based on 4 principles, respect, competence, responsibility and integrity.

You will see in the next slides what we mean by this, I'm not going to go through this in detail.

Some of these are quite straightforward as well.

So, as I mentioned, we need to receive ethical approval.

Now for your final projects, you will have to receive ethical approval by the university.

So what we do is we submit an ethics application to an ethics committee.

The ethics process can be long, because we need to ensure, we need to ensure as researchers, we need to ensure that we're covering all the ethical principles, that we are protecting our participants, that we're protecting every single aspect of how our participants are treated during our study.

And obviously, there needs to be a lot of specificity detail from the ethics committee to make sure that we adhere to ethics standard.

In some cases, depending on the type of research that you're conducting, you may have to seek approval from an external body as well.

So, for example, in the UK, if you're conducting research for the NHS or you are conducting research using participants recruited from the NHS, you will need to seek approval from the NHS as well, from hospital for example.

Now what we do in an ethics application is we include a project description.

We basically try to sell our study to the ethics committee.

So we explain what is the rationale for our research, so why do we want to conduct this research, typically including some literature showing what other people have already done and what we want to do.

Then we have to go through, we also need to include a lot of details about the design of our study.

So how, what our sample will be, how we're going to collect the data and so on.

So we need to include a lot of details because that's why we need to have a clear idea of what our study will look like before we start the ethics application.

It usually needs to go through a risk assessment.

So for example, if you are conducting research using the vulnerable population, Or if you're using covert observations where the participants are not aware that they're being observed?

Are you going to induce any psychological stress, anxiety or harm?

We try to avoid this but for some topics, for some research areas, that is unfortunately inevitable.

So we need to explain how we're going to address this or how we're going to tackle stress, anxiety and harm after the experiment, experiment, the study.

We're going to cover any sensitive topics.

If you are conducting a study in biopsychology, for example, or neuroscience, sometimes you have to use drugs.

Are we going to give our participants some financial reimbursement?

Now financial reimbursement is a tricky 1 because participation in an experiment is always voluntary.

It's part of the respect principle of the Code of Ethics.

Participants should not be coerced into participating in an experiment.

If we're offering financial reimbursement, then that might sometimes look like that we are forcing our participants to participate.

Then we need to talk about our data collection and analysis.

We need to ensure confidentiality and anonymity.

And this is very, very important confidentiality and anonymity, because we don't want any, We need to ensure that we don't disclose any information about the participant when we are testing them, for example.

But this happens with any study that you're conducting, being mental health or any other topic, even if you're talking about if you're doing cognitive psychology on attention, you have to ensure confidentiality and anonymity.

And we need to give our participants an informed consent and explain how we're going to recruit our participants.

So are we going to recruit our participants at university?

Are we going to recruit our participants at university?

Are we going to recruit our participants on the street?

Are we going to recruit them through social media?

Now here you have an example of a participant information sheet and a consent form.

So before the experiment starts, or the study starts, and when you're completing the ethics application, you need to ensure that you have these documents with you, that you have a participant information sheet where you're explaining the purpose of the study and everything that will happen in the study, with some exceptions, I'll get back to it in a second.

And you also have to have a consent form signed by your participants where they agree to certain points and sign that they're happy to take part in the study.

There are other elements that need to be taken into consideration.

I'm not going to overwhelm you with this now because you will come across these as soon as you have your first experience submitting an ethics application, but you will be given support in this, so don't worry about it.

So I said in the participant information sheet, we typically include what the participants will be doing during the experiment.

In some cases in psychology, although we try to avoid as much as we can, but in some cases we need to use deception.

And that is because we are studying psychological phenomenon.

So we don't want to disclose too much to the participant.

We want to make sure that the experiment, especially if it's an artificial setting like a lab, we want the setting to be as natural as possible and we want the behaviour to be as natural as possible.

So in some cases, we need to deceive our participants, but we need to ensure that we do something about it afterwards.

So we don't disclose the full purpose of the study, but we do tell them at the end of the experiment when we debrief our participants what the study was about and if they need any further support.

This will be important for the activity that we're looking at later.

In my case for example I did explain, sorry this is a participant information taken from 1 of my studies, I did explain what the participants would be doing, but I didn't tell them specifically that I was going to test their memory because I didn't want them to be influenced by this and perhaps make an effort to try and remember what was shown to them.

I wanted to test natural behaviour, so I simply told them that they were going to be asked some questions but I didn't specify what these questions were.

At the end of the experiment, I told them exactly what the experiment was about and I directed them to publication in the future if the study would ever be published.

Okay, so for the activity that I gave you, I asked you to compare to an influential study, Milgram's study, as I explained in my announcement and as you have in your units, Milgram study was a very influential study for the development of unethical conduct in psychological research.

So the study, I'm sure that you're all, well, many of you are aware of Milgram's study, the electric shock study, very, very unethical, but he still managed to conduct it.

And after this, the BPS and the APA, American Psychological Association, got onto it and decided that they had to have a set of guidelines for ethical procedures and what researchers should do to ensure their participants would be protected from any harm.

Now, the interesting thing is that this study managed to be replicated a few times.

For this activity, I chose 1 replication, but you can find a couple more and maybe there are even more now, I'm not sure, but there is this replication from 2009 that managed to conduct exactly the same study.

Now, there are a few things that I want you to pay attention to when it comes to this study, the replicated study in 2009.

Because obviously in 1963 Milgram was not so concerned about ethics, he was not so concerned about having to obtain ethical approval.

Whereas in 2009, Berger, not sure how you pronounce it, was definitely concerned on obtaining ethical approval and was definitely concerned on how he could ensure that his participants would be protected from any harm.

So I strongly recommend that you do read the 2 articles if you can.

It will give you a really good idea of how ethical considerations were later addressed.

Here I only have some bits from the method section of the 2 studies that you can take a look at.

So for example, in Milgram's study, after the interview, procedures taken to assure that the subject would leave the lab in a state of wellbeing.

A friendly reconciliation was arranged between the subject and the victim, and an effort was made to reduce any tensions that arose as a result of the experiment.

Now, for those of you who are not familiar with Milgram's study, the idea behind the study was that participants would administer fake electric shocks to confederates of the experiment.

Milgram wants to study how people, why people obey to authority.

This was soon after the Nazi regime, the concentration camps actually, and he wanted to understand why people obeyed, why officers, Nazi officers obeyed the order of an authority or authority figures.

And to do this he created this lab experiment where he had participants administer electric shocks to confederates, so to actors, people that were known to the researcher.

The participants did not know that the electric shocks were fake, so they experienced big, big distress.

This was because, for example, during the experiment, the participant would administer an electric shock, the confederate in another room would start, for example, screaming, would start saying, please stop, please stop, I don't think I can carry on, I don't think I can continue, and so on.

And the participants had the researcher prompting them to continue with the experiment.

So they were obeying this authority figure.

Obviously, the psychological harm and stress experienced by participants was not really addressed in Milgram's experiment.

Some participants actually reported months after taking part in the experiment still experiencing psychological, still experiencing some sort of trauma.

Participants were just offered a friendly reconciliation at the end of the experiment, but nothing more, nothing less.

Whereas in the case of Berger, the replication study, firstly participants were screened at the beginning of the experiment.

So before taking parts in the experiment to make sure that they were okay and that that would not affect any ongoing mental health issue.

And then at the end of the experiment, after the experiment finished, they were debriefed by a clinical psychologist or a clinician.

So they had a full assessment to make sure that they were okay after the experiment.

They were probably followed for a period of time as well after the experiment.

I said that we use deception in some cases.

Now, in the case of Milgram's experiment, participants did not know what they were going to do during the experiment.

I think they were just invited to take part in a learning experiment, memory experiment, something like that, but they did not know they were going to administer electric shocks to confederates.

So they didn't have a clinician conducting the debriefing, but it was the researcher, the principal investigator.

Now, I probably got confused with another study where they actually had a clinical psychologist.

I think it was a study conducted in Poland, if I'm not mistaken, there is another replication study where a clinical psychologist conducted the debriefing and an assessment to make sure that the participants were OK.

Here are just some questions for you to think about.

They also introduced in the replication study some additional safeguards measures.

You can take a look at these if you want.

You just need to read the article and you will find these.

So respect, value, responsibility and integrity.

The 4 principles, you can look at how respect, value, responsibility and integrity are ensured in the replication study.

And in any study that you will come across, you can see how respect, value, responsibility and integrity are maintained.

Then, so here are just some differences that you might want to think about.

Some differences in terms of, these are just additional to the ethical considerations.

Always useful to have these kinds of activities because it helps, it's just further guidance on how to evaluate studies, especially when you're looking at replication studies.

Always be critical when you're looking at evaluation studies.

So first of all, Milgram study was conducted in 1964, where they had society, particular society, particular culture.

The replication was conducted in 2009, so do you think that things changed in 2009?

Do you think that they still managed to get very similar results to Milgram's study, but still some things to consider.

In the original study, Milgram only included men, but then in later replications, later variations actually, he included women.

He ran many more experiments, many different variations of, there are many different variations of Milgram study.

Milgram did not control for any additional variables, for example, personality, whereas in the replication, they included additional measures for control for individual differences.

And then in terms of ethics, many things were addressed, many issues were addressed in the replication study.

1 key thing was that in Milgram study, the shocks were up to 450 volts, still fake shocks, but the participants did not know that they were fake.

Whereas in the replication, the shock was up to 150 volts.

So I'm assuming that they probably would have had some ethical issues there if they kept the shocks to 450 volts.

Now 1 question that I will leave you with is, yes, Milgram's study was largely unethical.

Yes, there is a replication study similar to Milgram's where it managed to address some ethical issues.

But the question is, can obedient studies be carried out without inducing any harm?

See all Unknown transcripts on Zoom

Petra Marcotti's Personal Meeting Room