Summarize the four basic principles of ethical research, and provide an example of how each principle might be violated in a research study.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A good answer would include the following key points:
- Protection from physical or psychological harm. If a researcher wanted to see how long newborns could hold their breath under water, this would be an unethical experiment violating this principle.
- Obtaining informed consent. Telling a group of elementary school children to "just fill out these forms; you don't need to know why" would violate this principle.
- Justified deception. Convincing a child that her puppy was just murdered in order to arouse and measure a stress response would be an unjustified use of deception.
- Privacy must be maintained. A researcher who left adolescents' confidential responses to questions about engaging in unprotected sexual activity lying on a table in a coffee shop would not be maintaining the privacy of those responses.