Are any principles of ethical conduct violated in the following examples? What valid arguments could be made to justify what occurs? These are matters that could be debated. Alternatively, you could list the ethical pros and cons of each before reaching a conclusion.
1. Ken is researching memory and Dawn volunteers to be a participant in the research. Ken is very attracted to Dawn and asks for her address and mobile phone number, explaining that she may need to be contacted for a follow-up interview. This is a lie, as no such interviews are planned. He later phones her up for a date.
2. A student researcher is studying illicit drug use on a university campus. She is given permission to distribute questionnaires during an introductory psychology lecture. Participants are assured anonymity and confidentiality, although the researcher has deliberately included questions about demographic information such as the participants’ exact date of birth, their hometown, the modules they are taking and so forth. However, the student researcher is really interested in personality factors and drug taking. She gets another student to distribute personality questionnaires to the same class a few weeks later. The same information about exact date of birth, hometown, place of birth and so forth is collected. This is used to match each drug questionnaire with that same person’s personality questionnaire. However, the questionnaires are anonymous, since no name is requested.
3. Professor Green is interested in fascist and other far-right political organisations. Since he believes that these organisations would not permit a researcher to observe them, he poses as a market trader and applies for and is given membership of several of these organisations. He attends the meetings and other events with other members. He is carrying out participant observation and is compiling extensive notes of what he witnesses for eventual publication.