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Ethical Issues & Ways of Dealing with Them (AQA A Level Psychology): Exam Questions

49 mins10 questions
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12 marks

A researcher placed an advert in a university psychology department asking for third year students to participate in a sleep experiment.

Each student had a sleep tracker watch to wear at home for the two-week study. Each morning they were asked to open the sleep tracker app to view their sleep quality data on their mobile phones. The students were unaware that the sleep data they could see on their phones had been manipulated by the researcher. Over the two weeks of the study, each student saw that he or she had had poor sleep quality for seven random nights of the experiment and good sleep quality for the remaining nights.

Every morning, after viewing the sleep data, each student completed a questionnaire about the previous night’s sleep. One of the questions asked the students to rate how well rested they felt, on a scale from 1–10, after the previous night’s sleep. Apart from this, students were asked to continue their normal everyday activities.

One ethical issue in this study is deception, as the students were unaware that the sleep data they could see on their phones had been manipulated by the researcher.

Explain one way in which the researcher might deal with the deception in this study

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22 marks

Twenty depressed patients were treated using cognitive behavioural therapy. Over the course of the six-week treatment, each patient’s mood was monitored every week using a self-report mood scale (where a score of 20 = extremely positive mood and a score of 0 = extremely negative mood). Each week they also completed a quality of sleep questionnaire which was scored from 10 = excellent sleep to 0 = very poor sleep.

At the end of the study the researchers correlated each patient’s final mood score with his or her final sleep score.

Outline one way in which the researchers should have dealt with ethical issues in this study.

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31 mark

Which of the following is not a feature of informed consent?

  • Participants should be told the nature of the task

  • Participants should be warned of any potential hazards

  • Participants should be told how long the task will take

  • Participants should be told the aim of the study

Choose your answer

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14 marks

Dr Noize is interested in conducting an experiment into the effect of heavy metal music on concentration levels. She designs a study which involves participants memorising a list of words either in silence for 1 minute or in a room with loud heavy metal music playing for 1 minute.

Explain two ethical considerations relevant to this study.

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24 marks

Anna wishes to conduct an investigation into the relationship between social media use and self-rated perceptions of attractiveness in her college. She intends to design a questionnaire which will ask her participants how much time they spend on social media per week and how they rate their physical appearance.

Explain how could implement two ethical considerations in her research.

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34 marks

Explain what is meant by the ethical considerations of privacy and confidentiality.

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16 marks

A psychologist decided to conduct an experiment to investigate the effect of watching horror films before going to bed.

A volunteer sample of 50 university students consented to take part in the experiment.

The 50 students were randomly split into two groups. Group 1 watched a horror film before going to bed each night for the first week then a romantic comedy before going to bed each night for the second week. Group 2 watched the romantic comedy in the first week and the horror film in the second week.

When the students woke up each morning, each student received a text message that asked if they had had a nightmare during the night. They could respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Write a brief consent form that would have been suitable for use in this experiment.

The consent form should:

  • include some detail of what participants might expect to happen

  • refer to ethical issues

  • be in an appropriate format/style

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28 marks

Discuss ethical issues in social influence research.

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36 marks

Identify two ethical issues in the design and conduct of psychological research.

In each case, explain how the issue you have identified could be dealt with.

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412 marks

Imagine you have been asked to design a study to investigate possible gender differences in card sorting behaviours. You decide you will ask participants to sort a shuffled pack of playing cards into their suits of hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades. You decide you will time the participants as they do this using a stopwatch.

Discuss the following aspects of this investigation:

  • with reference to the card sorting task, explain how you would ensure that this is made the same task for all participants

  • one methodological issue you should take into account when obtaining suitable participants for this study and explain how you would deal with this issue

  • how you would ensure that the experience of your participants is ethical

  • how you would use inferential statistics to analyse the results of this investigation

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