Results

Milgram's Obedience Studies
James M. DuBois
In the early 1960’s, Stanley Milgram used deception to recruit subjects for a psychology experiment. Subjects were told that the research concerned the effect of punishment on learning, when in fact it studied obedience to authority.

Full Disclosure: Use of Control Groups in Behavioral Intervention Research
Celia B. Fisher
Fearing that parents of children who are in the control group of a school-based substance abuse intervention study will feel slighted, a researcher does not mention the intervention– only the questionnaire – in the control group parental permission form. Fisher presents this as an example of poor research practice.

Potential Inability to Provide Informed Consent Due to Substance Abuse
Celia B. Fisher
Researchers develop creative ways to evaluate the consent of participants whose capacity to give truly informed consent may be compromised due to substance use and/or other comorbid disorders. Fisher presents this as an example of best practice.

Making Everyone Feel Like a Winner
Celia B. Fisher
To minimize distress and the potential for distrust of staff, investigators researching aggression in boys with conduct disorder do not disclose the purpose of the low-risk research but rather present the study activities as a game. Fisher presents this as an example of best practice.

Withholding Study Purpose
Emily E. Anderson and James M. DuBois
A researcher wants to test an intervention to prevent child abuse among pregnant women in drug treatment programs but feels that revealing the true aim of the intervention may upset women already in difficult life circumstances (and limit enrollment). She asks her institution’s IRB for permission to tell potential participants that the study is a parenting skills development rather than child abuse prevention program.

Family Involvement in Informed Consent
Emily E. Anderson
As principal investigator of a study on Mexican-American women and postpartum depression, you learn that many potential study participants want to discuss the study with their husbands before signing a consent form.

Lack of Permission and Assent
Gerald P. Koocher and Patricia C. Keith-Spiegel
Researchers have the appropriate permissions and assent to observe playground behavior of specific children. Nonstudy children, unaware of the study, are observed only when interacting with study children and are not identified by name. The authors present this as a case of acceptable research practice.

Wrong Assumptions
Gerald P. Koocher and Patricia C. Keith-Spiegel
Researchers employ a method of passive consent in requesting permission from parents to survey their children regarding sensitive family issues. The authors present this case as an example of poor research practices.

A "Modest" Proposal on Alcohol Experimentation
Peter Finn
Researchers want to examine the relative contributions of the pharmacological effects of alcohol and the belief that one has consumed alcohol on aggressive behavior in a controlled experiment. Researchers plan to deceive subjects regarding the type of beverage (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) they receive and the true purpose of the experiment. Following the experiment, subjects will be debriefed regarding the deception, the type of beverage they received, and the true purpose of the study.

Ethical Issues in Longitudinal Research with At-Risk Children and Adolescents
Brian Schrag
A researcher wants to conduct surveys and interviews with grade school children to study resilience and exposure to maladaptive environments. The school principal insists that she does not need parental consent for the study, as the school supports the study.

Music Therapy
Brian Schrag
A participant in a low-risk, non-therapeutic study on the genetics and pathophysiology of schizophrenia appears confused. The graduate research assistant collecting data from her is unsure if she is competent to consent to research participation.