Imagine that a researcher wanted to conduct a five-year study that followed coll
ID: 3501229 • Letter: I
Question
Imagine that a researcher wanted to conduct a five-year study that followed college students from the first days of their freshman year to one-year post graduation. The researcher was interested in studying a variety of aspects of college student life, including alcohol/drug consumption, sexual behavior, mental illness, academic success/failures, and family/peer relationships. The researcher plans to collect data in a variety of manners (i.e., surveys, observation, interviews). Identify an ethical principle or ethical standard from the APA’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct and how that principle/standard would be ethically adhered to in a study such as this.
Explanation / Answer
in such cases, ethical standards could be adhered to in the following manner:
According to section 4: it is important that the confidential information obtained should. E storedsuch that the confidentiality of the subjects should be protected. It is important that, before the psychologist would be choosing his participants or following them, he should be obtaining a legal permission from their legal representatives.
Also, the information could only be discussed for professional and scientific purposes.
Since, this is a case where, the psychologist would be completely shadowing an individual for half a decade of their most important years, it is of utmost importance that this clause of privacy and confidentiality be maintained in a proper manner.