Question

in a 1-2 page essay describe strategies for identifying and minimizing risks and deception in psychological research.

Answer 1

Before conducting any research, there are some ethical standards that one needs to follow. There are mainly two organizations for determining the ethical standards for any research.

1) Institutional Review Boards( IRBs) take steps to protect the rights of human participants.

2) Institutional Animal Care and Use committees ensure that animals are treated well in any research.

So its very important for a new researcher to know the ethical resposibilities. He should know the relevant standards, specific policies etc of the institution before conducting the research. In short as a resercher a person must take the responsibility of all the ethics that is included in that particular research.

Before starting a study, a researcher must identify and minimize risks. These risks include physical and psychological harm to participants. After identifying the risks, its possible to reduce or sometimes eliminate them completely. We can do it by modifying the research designs. Another way to minimize the risks is the prescreening of the participants. They can be informed before conducting the experiments about the questions of the survey or study. Prescreening can be used to eliminate the participants who do not want to take part in the survey because of their fear.

One more strategy to minimize the risks is to maintain the confidentiality of the participants' personal information. Only the participant should have the right to decide to share his details with others.

Strategies for identifying and minimizing deception in a research- Deception in any psychological research takes place when researcher mislead the participant intentionally. But sometimes it becomes necessary as a strategy in many pasychological areas. it is very unethical to make individual participate in any research by deceiving them.

Deception is only acceptable when there is no other way to solve the research problem without using it. First strategy to minimize deception is ask yourself whether it is important for conducting the research. Debriefing is a good method to provide the information about the nature of the research, its role and importance to the participant. The researcher must tell the use of deception at the end of the research.