Part 1: Review. Review Table 5.1 and 5.2 (p. 94 – 96 or 104-106 depending on edition, McBride (2013). The Process of Research in Psychology (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Sage and Mitchell, M. L., Jolly, J. M., & O’Shea, R. P. (2013). Writing for Psychology (4th ed.). Belmont, CA; Wadworth

Part 2: IRB Review. Examine the following studies and decide whether the study is (A) exempt, (B) eligible for expedited review, or if (C) it needs full review by an IRB committee.

1. As part of a class assignment students will survey other students about their sleep and exercise 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 access to coded data regarding work satisfaction and turnover rates.

4. A researcher is interested in study habit and grade point average.

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.

Part 3: Belmont Principles. Read the description of the study below and decide which if any, of the Belmont principle are applicable. Then, decide whether the study conforms to the ethical principle(s) that apply. Defend your answers.

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).

 
3. A researcher has proposed to study the effects of alcohol on social behavior. She intends to observe consenting adults drink alcohol (she will record the number of drinks they consume) and then observe their willingness to perform at karaoke by recording the frequency, loudness, and types of songs they sing (taken from Evans & Rooney, 2011, p. 57).

 
Part 4: Risk-Benefit Analysis. 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. Participants interact for an hour with another person who is actually a confederate. Afterward, both agree 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. Researchers were interested in psychological reactions to mortality. They asked people to contemplate what they think will happen when they die, when someone they love dies, or when a stranger dies. Participants then completed a just-world-belief measure.

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?

3. 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 completed 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?

4. A field experiment is conducted at a local bar. The researcher, interested in flirting behaviors, asks male and female confederates to smile and make eye contact with others at the pub for varying amounts of time (2 sec vs. 5 sec.) and varying number of times (once, twice, etc.). The researcher observes the response of those receiving the gaze (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?

Part 5: Assessing Risk. Of the studies listed in part 4, which posses the most risk? Why?