Chapter 3: Ethical Procedures

For the ethical procedures section, you will begin with stating what agreements you have received to get access to your participants or your data. Some examples might be if you are interviewing people through an agency, you will need an agreement with the agency (See the IRB site for samples of such agreements). Include a copy of the agreement in your appendix.

Next indicate your approval number and date from the Walden IRB, if you need to get approvals from other IRBS, list them here. Discuss any ethical concerns about recruitment materials and a plan to address them. Some examples might include how you will recruit (such as with a flyer), your consent form, and if you are using children and assent form for them. Then you will need to discuss any ethical concerns related to your data collection, such as people refusing participation, stopping midway, and having any possible adverse reactions to the study. Some things to remember that will help with this section, participants have the right to stop whenever they want. You do however, have to decide what you will do with their data- will you include it or exclude it? Anytime your participants might have issues arise from your study questions you need to find a way to help them. You are not allowed to counsel them, but you could provide phone numbers/ info on low cost counseling or hotlines.

If there is any possibility of participants revealing any personal medical, educational information or illegal activity (e.g., child or elderly abuse, drug use), you must have a plan as to how you will handle it.

Next, you need to describe how you will protect your data. State if the data is considered confidential (you know who provided it) or anonymous (you do not know who provided it). If data are confidential, and it is possible to determine who provided it, extra protections are required (an example is if there are 2 women who work at a given agency with 30 men, you will want to disguise them so it isn’t possible for the reader to identify them). You will want to maintain the data on password protected flash drives and limit access to it. State that you will destroy all data after 7 years (what APA suggests).

Finally, describe any special ethical considerations for your study, such as doing a study at your workplace, conflict of interest issues, and if you are using incentives, such as gift cards. Incentives are not recommended in general. See the IRB web site on these issues; they have additional information listed there.

We have now finished reviewing the three chapters that make up the proposal. Next time we will begin Chapter 4. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu