Читать книгу Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling - Kenneth S. Pope - Страница 38
The Empirical Approach to a Code Half a Century Later
ОглавлениеAPA pioneers provided an array of reasons to use an empirical approach to create the code of ethics for psychologists. But a critical incident survey of APA members could also serve other purposes. For instance, the actuarial data of ethics committees, licensing boards, and civil and criminal courts can reveal trends in ethical or legal violations as established by review agencies, empirical critical incident studies. They can also reveal ethical dilemmas and concerns that are encountered in day-to-day practice by a diverse range of psychologists and not just those who are subject to formal complaint.
The APA critical incident study undertaken in the 1940s was replicated in the 1990s and published in the American Psychologist (Pope & Vetter, 1992). In this study, 1,319 randomly sampled APA members were asked to describe incidents that they found ethically challenging or troubling. Table 3.1 describes 703 incidents in 23 categories provided by 679 psychologists.
Table 3.1. Ethical Problems Reported by a National Sample of APA Members.
| Category | Number | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Confidentiality | 128 | 18 |
| Blurred, dual, or conflictual relationships | 116 | 17 |
| Payment sources, plans, settings, and methods | 97 | 14 |
| Academic settings, teaching dilemmas, and concerns about training | 57 | 8 |
| Forensic psychology | 35 | 5 |
| Research | 29 | 4 |
| Conduct of colleagues | 29 | 4 |
| Sexual issues | 28 | 4 |
| Assessment | 25 | 4 |
| Questionable or harmful interventions | 20 | 3 |
| Competence | 20 | 3 |
| Ethics and related codes and committees | 17 | 2 |
| School psychology | 15 | 2 |
| Publishing | 14 | 2 |
| Helping the financially stricken | 13 | 2 |
| Supervision | 13 | 2 |
| Advertising and (mis)representation | 13 | 2 |
| Industrial-organizational psychology | 9 | 1 |
| Medical issues | 5 | 1 |
| Termination | 5 | 1 |
| Ethnicity | 4 | 1 |
| Treatment records | 4 | 1 |
| Miscellaneous | 7 | 1 |
| Source: Adapted with permission from “Ethical Dilemmas Encountered by Members of the American Psychological Association: A National Survey,” by K. S. Pope and V. A. Vetter, 1992, American Psychologist, 47, 397–411, p. 399. Available at http://kspope.com. Copyright 1992 by the American Psychological Association. |
Here is a sample of the ethical concerns that the psychologists described in this anonymous survey:
