Ethical Principles and Basic Assumptions in Experimental Research
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The document outlines basic ethical principles for experimental research involving human and animal participants. For human participants, researchers must obtain informed consent, avoid deception, respect freedom to withdraw, and protect participants from harm and privacy violations. For animal research, guidelines require humane treatment, proper care and handling, and minimizing pain and distress. The document also discusses key assumptions of experimental psychology including empiricism, testability, determinism, parsimony, and operational definitions to connect unobservable concepts to concrete observations.
Ethical Principles and Basic Assumptions in Experimental Research
- 1. Basic Ethical Principles in Experimental Research Prepared by: Orlando A. Pistan, MAEd-GC Psychology Instructor
- 2. Basic Ethical Principles in Experimental Research The American Psychological Association have issued ethical guidelines for researchers involving human participants and animal subjects.
- 3. Human Participants Responsibility. The researcher should be responsible for protecting the rights of human participants. Establish objectives. The researcher must establish the objectives of the research and reach an agreement with participants prior to their participation. Both participants and researcher must clarify the obligations and responsibilities of each.
- 4. Human Participants Informed consent. Full awareness must be given to the participants regarding the purpose of the experiment and must not use concealment or deception. Respect freedom. The researcher must respect the individual’s freedom to decline participation or withdraw from the experiment at anytime.
- 5. Human Participants Protection from harm. Researchers must assist participants from physical and mental discomfort and any changes that may arise from the study. Confidentiality. Results and findings must be maintained to protect indue invasion of privacy.
- 6. Animal Participants Moral and Legal standard. Researchers must abide to established laws and ordinances and guidelines for the care and handling of animals. Students are encouraged to select animals that are small and manageable.
- 7. Animal Participants The presence of qualified supervisors should be ensured so that the students are trained in the care and handling of animals. The basic daily needs of each animal shall be of prime concern. There must be special arrangement made during weekends, holidays and vacation to protect animals from sources of disturbance or harm.
- 8. Animal Participants When the research experiment has been completed, the supervisor is responsible for proper disposition of the animals. No student shall inflict pain, severe deprivation, or high distress to the animals. All projects must be conducted in accordance with American Psychological Association (APA) principles for the care and use of animals.
- 9. Basic Assumptions of Experimental Psychology As a scientific endeavor, experimental psychology shares several assumptions with most other sciences. Among these are the following: 1. Empiricism 2. Testability 3. Determinism 4. Parsimony 5. Operational definition
- 10. Empiricism Perhaps the most basic assumption of psychological science is that factual statements about the world must ultimately be based on observations of the world. This notion of empiricism requires that hypotheses and theories be tested against observations of the natural world rather than on a prior reasoning, intuition, or revelation.
- 11. Testability Closely related to empiricism is the idea that, to be useful, a scientific law or theory must be testable with available research methods. If a theory cannot be tested in any conceivable way then many scientists consider the theory to be meaningless. Testability implies falsifiability, which is the idea that some set of observations could prove the theory to be incorrect. Testability has been emphasized in psychology because influential or well-known theories like those of Freud have been difficult to test.
- 12. Determinism Experimental psychologists, like most scientists, accept the notion of determinism. This is the assumption that any state of an object or event is determined by prior states. In other words, behavioral or mental phenomena are typically stated in terms of cause and effect. If a phenomenon is sufficiently general and widely confirmed, it may be called a "law"; psychological theories serve to organize and integrate laws.
- 13. Parsimony Another guiding idea of science is parsimony, the search for simplicity. For example, most scientists agree that if two theories handle a set of empirical observations equally well, we should prefer the simpler or more parsimonious of the two. Occam's razor is a principle from philosophy. Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case the one that requires the least speculation is usually correct.
- 14. Operational Definition Some well-known behaviorists such as Edward Tolman and Clark Hull popularized the idea of operationism, or operational definition. Operational definition implies that a concept be defined in terms of concrete, observable procedures. Experimental psychologists attempt to define currently unobservable phenomena, such as mental events, by connecting them to observations.
- 15. Ethical Principles and Basic Assumptions in Experimental Research Thank you for paying attention.