Читать книгу The Research Experience - Ann Sloan Devlin - Страница 144

In a good deal of research, especially research in social psychology, the project would be undermined if participants knew the hypothesis of the study. In that situation, participants might purposely try to provide responses they thought supported or refuted the hypothesis. For that reason, researchers are often in the predicament of having to explain why they are asking participants to take part in the research, without “giving away” the real purpose. This situation leads to the need for a cover story, that is, a reasonable explanation for the purpose of research that does not reveal the hypothesis.

Cover story: Explanation about the purpose of research that hides the true nature of the study; used to reduce demand characteristics.

Passive deception: Form of deception that occurs through omission, rather than through commission; typically involves less than full explanation of the purposes of the research.

Active deception: Situation where there is commission as part of the research, either in the informed consent or in the research procedures themselves, that misleads, provides false feedback, or otherwise misrepresents the research.

Chapter 4 on ethical issues covers the difference between passive and active deception. In general, if you are not purposely misstating the reason for the research but are not fully explaining the reason, the approach is considered passive deception. If you are purposely misleading participants, this is one reason the research would be considered a case of active deception. As explained in Chapter 4 on ethics, the revised Common Rule requires prospective agreement from participants for such deception if the researcher wants to apply for an exemption from further IRB review. The nature and extent of the deception would determine the need for further IRB review. Frederick Gravetter and Lori-Ann Forzano (2016) provided a nice, simple way of describing the difference: Passive deception is like keeping a secret, and active deception is like telling a lie (p. 112).

In some situations, researchers simply say that the participants are going to take part in a study about attitudes and leave it at that (keeping a secret); this approach is sometimes called incomplete disclosure (see an overview put out by the University of California–Berkeley: http://cphs.berkeley.edu/deception.pdf). In other instances, there is no need for a cover story at all. If you were interested in the reactions people have to the design elements in their hospital room, for example, you might directly say that.

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Figure 3.7 Single- Versus Double-Blind Designs

There are situations where you might need to have cover stories that involve active deception. Consider the following example. In a research project, the students were interested in what they called the difference between no violence and minor violence (pushing on someone else’s arm without much force). Following up on literature they had read about the weapon focus effect and eyewitness testimony (Loftus et al., 1987), the students were interested in whether witnessing minor violence would result in lower verbatim recall of a scripted conversation than would witnessing the same conversation without the minor violence.

To conduct the study (St. Pierre & Wong, 2003), the students enlisted the help of two student colleagues (confederates) whose task it was to have a mild argument with a slight arm shove (experimental condition) and without the slight arm shove (control condition). Actual participants in this study were the witnesses to this argument and were told by the researcher that they would be filling out some questionnaires. Soon after the student participants and confederates were seated, the researcher told them she needed to leave the room to get some supplies. During her planned absence, the staged encounter took place (with the confederates whose ostensible role was also as participants). After the researcher returned, the actual participants were told to write down, verbatim, the conversation they had just heard. The dependent variable in the study was the number of correctly recalled words (i.e., verbatim recall) from the conversation. The student researchers found a significant effect of the manipulation in that there was significantly lower verbatim recall for the minor than for the no violence condition. This is a situation in which a cover story was necessary to avoid having participants closely attend to the conversation they overheard, which would not occur in a typical setting.

Confederates: People who participate in a research project but are actually assisting the experimenter.

Pilot test: Using a small number of participants to test aspects of the research and receive feedback on measures and/or manipulations.

Manipulation check: Questions posed in research, typically at the end, to assess whether the participants were aware of the level of the independent variable to which they were assigned.