Q.What are the ethical guidelines that a psychologist needs to follow while conducting a psychological enquiry?

A psychologist conducting research is bound by a defined set of ethical guidelines that protect participants throughout the study. …

Because psychological research involves real human participants, a psychologist is required to follow five specific ethical guidelines throughout the course of any study.

Voluntary participation requires that participants be free, without coercion or excessive inducement, to decide whether to take part in the study, and free to withdraw at any point after it has begun, without facing any penalty for doing so.

Informed consent requires that participants be told, before any data is collected, exactly what will happen to them during the study, so their decision to participate is genuinely informed; this matters particularly where participants might face mild electric shock, obnoxious stimuli, or be asked for private information, and where deception is used, the general nature of the study must still be explained beforehand.

Debriefing requires that, once the study is over, participants be given whatever information is needed to fully understand what the research was actually about, especially where deception was used, and that any anxiety or other unwanted effect caused by the study be addressed so participants leave in the same state they arrived in.

Sharing the results of the study requires the researcher to go back to participants after analysing the data and tell them what was found, fulfilling their expectations and sometimes yielding fresh insight for the researcher too. …