Dr. Dolittle decided to conduct an inductive study to explore why students cheat

Question

Dr. Dolittle decided to conduct an inductive study to explore why students cheat on written assignments. Since Dr. Dolittle also taught an introductory sociology course, she decided to use her sociology students for her research project.

Since she thought it would be valuable for students to see social research interviews, she decided to publicly interview each student during their class and videotape the interviews. Students would be required to complete their individual interview in order to pass the course. Since this was an exploratory research project, she decided to ask students if they had ever cheated on an assignment, why they cheated, and if they were subjected to discipline due to breaking the college’s academic integrity policies.

Discuss the ethical issues and considerations of this research protocol. Would Dr. Dolittle’s research protocol be approved by the college’s Institutional Review Board? Why or why not?

Explanation / Answer

Several ethical issues with this study can be identified. In any psychological research, informed consent is essential and participants should be given sufficient autonomy to withdraw from a research study. In this study, however, students are required to almost compulsorily participate as their participation is linked to their course completion. Furthermore, this study also violates the right to privacy as the teacher decided to publicly interview each student during their class and videotape the interviews. Finally, the students are being put in an extremely high risk situation as they need to disclose information about whether they have cheated on examinations. Their responses can lead to severe punitive actions by their university. Keeping all this in mind, it is highly likely that Dr. Dolittle’s research protocol will not be approved by the college’s Institutional Review Board.

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