Results

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.

Differing Perceptions of Risks and Benefits
Emily E. Anderson
A researcher conducts a non-therapeutic study with young adults with Tourette’s Syndrome and their families. The participants’ perceptions of risks and benefits differ from those of the researcher.

Severe Emotional Disturbance Studies
James M. DuBois
Dr. Randall has proposed two studies involving children with severe emotional disturbance (SED), one involving a control group and the other random assignment into foster care.

Do No Harm
Patricia Keith-Spiegel and Gerald P. Koocher
Researchers offer low-income parents several hundred dollars to enroll their infant children in research that has no potential benefits. The authors present this case as an example of poor research practices.

Jumping to Conclusions
Patricia Keith-Spiegel and Gerald P. Koocher
A researcher makes conclusions from her data that are inappropriate given the study design. The authors present this case as an example of poor research practice.

Too Blue
Gerald P. Koocher and Patricia C. Keith-Spiegel
Teenagers were administered a widely used and standardized self-report depression scale as part of a larger battery of assessments. Ned Blue’s test indicated such an elevated score that the researcher was seriously concerned about the young man’s welfare.

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.

Students as Research Subjects
William Timberlake
A researcher recruits students to participate in study to test an experimental treatment for depression. Several students who are randomly assigned to the control group voice complaints about their lack of treatment.

Disulfiram
Peter Finn
A researcher designs an experiment to test the effectiveness of disulfiram alone versus in combination with three other treatments (alcohol education, relapse prevention, or Alcoholics Anonymous). Subjects are volunteers who have sought treatment for alcoholism elsewhere but cannot afford to enter a clinic program.

Working at Cross Purposes
Joan E. Sieber
A researcher attempts to gather information from Chicano families regarding children’s needs. The researcher is unaware that many of the people in the community are not legal residents of the U.S., a fact that may effect respondents answers and the sampling design.

Political Points
Brian Schrag
A researcher is unsure how to disseminate potentially controversial findings regarding needle exchange programs and HIV infection rates.

To Control or Not to Control
Brian Schrag
For her M.S. research thesis in counseling, Sherry would like to develop and test an educational intervention for students having academic difficulty at the technical college where she is an academic counselor. While Sherry feels having a control group would deny at-risk students the opportunity for improvement, her committee argues that a control group is needed in order to strengthen her research design.

Heightened Protections in Clinical Trials
James M. DuBois
A researcher recommends additional protections for participants in clinical trials that pose any risk of severe decline or relapse.

Psychosis Inducing Experiments
James M. DuBois
The director of an advocacy groups asks your hospital’s ethics review board to discontinue all washout and psychosis-inducing studies.

Proposed Study of the Natural Course of Schizophrenia with Self-Help Supports
Jean Campbell
In response to the suggestions of advocates, mental health consumers, and researchers that people with mental illness suffer more from the disabling effects of psychotropic medications, institutionalization, and other treatments than from the disease itself, government scientists propose a study of the natural course of schizophrenia.

Conducting Survey Research with Adolescents with Anxiety Disorders
Emily E. Anderson
You are a researcher administering surveys to adolescents with anxiety disorders. The IRB asks you to change the information included on parental consent forms.

Ensuring Fair Representation of Minority Children in Research
Emily E. Anderson
A multi-site study comparing several treatment modalities for children with ADHD using random assignment seeks to ensure fair representation and access to research benefits for minority children given issues of potential overdiagnosis and underrepresentation in care.

Getting Consent to do Research with Institutionalized Children
Emily E. Anderson
Investigators studying the neurological correlates of AIDS in infected children evaluate the risks and benefits to institutionalized child participants.

Placebo Trials with Prevalent but Unproven Treatments
Emily E. Anderson
At a residential treatment center for persons with mental retardation, lithium is frequently used to treat aggressive and self-injurious adolescents. However, this use of the drug has never been systematically tested on this population. Investigators propose a placebo-control experimental design but some staff members believe this is depriving patients of an established treatment.

Accruing Patients for a Problem-Solving Intervention for Suicidal Young Adults
Emily E. Anderson
You are a researcher considering how to conduct a randomized trial of a behavioral intervention.