Abnormal Psychology

Researching Abnormality 167

Ethical Guidelines for Research

In theory, you could use an experimental design to test your hypothesis about child-

hood loss and adult depression after a breakup. This would involve long-term plan-

ning. First, you would have to fi nd children who volunteer (and understand what

they are volunteering for) to participate in the research project. Then, you would

have to randomly assign each of them to one of three different groups: (1) a group

that would suffer an early loss in the family—such as their parents’ divorcing and a

parent’s moving far away—and also experience helplessness; (2) a group that would

suffer an early loss in their family without feeling helplessness (for instance, the

experimenter might allow the child to convince a parent not to move away); or

(3) a group that would not suffer an early loss in their family. During their college

years, you could, in theory, randomly assign some participants in each group to

be dumped by a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Obviously, were there such a study, people would not be clamoring to partici-

pate. But what if people did volunteer for the study—should it be conducted? What

if parents volunteered their young children? In such cases, it’s easy to say, “of course

not!” It would be morally and ethically wrong to infl ict such loss and emotional

turmoil for the sake of a research study. More generally, certain methods are obvi-

ously unethical. Everyone would agree that it would be wrong to traumatize people

in order to learn why some develop chronic psychological problems afterward and

some don’t. Similarly, it would be unethical to cause people to become addicted to

drugs in order to do research on how easily they can overcome the addiction.

But most ethical issues are not so clear-cut. How, then, do researchers decide

which research studies are ethical and which are not? To address this question,

Table 5.1 • Research Methods in Psychopathology

Research Method Important Feature(s) Drawback(s)

Experimental Design Use of independent and dependent

variables and random assignment allows

researchers to infer cause and effect.

Most research on etiological factors that

contribute to psychopathology cannot be studied

with experiments (but experiments are often used

to study the effects of treatment).

Quasi-experiments Used when it is possible to identify

independent and dependent variables,

but random assignment of participants to

groups is not possible; researchers can still

infer cause and effect.

Because random assignment isn’t possible,

possible confounds are diffi cult to eliminate.

Correlational Research Used when it is not possible to manipulate

independent variables such as etiological

factors; researchers can examine

relationships between variables.

Results indicate only related factors, not causal

factors.

Case Studies Often descriptive, but can use any of the

research methods applied to a single

participant.

Caution must be exercised in generalizing from

the sole participant to others; there are many

possible confounding factors.

Single-Participant Experiments An experiment with one participant (and so

random assignment isn’t possible); cause

and effect can be inferred.

Caution must be exercised in generalizing from

the sole participant to others; there are many

possible confounding factors.

Meta-analysis A statistical analysis that combines the

results of a number of studies that examine

the same general question to determine the

overall effect.

It is diffi cult to estimate the number of studies

that failed to fi nd an effect and thus were not

published and not included in the analysis; the

studies analyzed are often not of equal quality but

their results are nevertheless weighted equally in

the analysis.