Ethical considerations when using children in psychological research (8 marks)

Research in developmental psychology imposes challenges and particular ethical dilemmas for
researchers, especially when children and adolescents are concerned. There are often links drawn in
psychology between childhood experiences and psychological wellbeing and functioning later in
life. Therefore it is essential that children are used in psychological research in order to gain a better
understanding of how the brain and mind develops as well as how the developmental processes can
affect the person later in life. However children can be considered as more vulnerable to
psychological or physical harm than adults are, making it very important to consider the ethical
issues with using children in research. The BPS code of ethics outlines what British psychologists
must adhere to when undertaking research and before it can be approved. The research must lie
under the categories of respect, competence, integrity and responsibility. Clearly these guidelines
are important for the protection of all participants, however particularly where children are
concerned, protection from harm, informed consent, confidentiality and deception become very
important ethical considerations. Parental consent must be gained before carrying out any
observations and researchers must be aware that if the child becomes too distressed, they will need
to stop the research to avoid any long term damaging effects. It is vital that all the details about the
child are kept confidential and the identity of the child is protected. Research involving children
should adhere to the UN convention on the rights of the child. They usually offer guidance as to
what countries should do. Articles governing the convention state that the best interests of the child
must be a top priority. UNCRC acknowledges that children have the right to be consulted, to have
access to information, freedom of speech etc. under current guidance, fair proportion of previous
research using children is now regarded unethical. The key issue is balancing children’s participation
in research against the ethical guidelines and the UNCRC. Factors such as risks, costs, inconvenience,
sense of coercion and intrusion of privacy must be looked into. Therefore, researchers need to stress
clearly the potential benefits, i.e. the risks and costs, if the research isn’t carried out. Furthermore,
researchers should response appropriately to children who may wish to withdraw. By the current
standards, a lot of previous research using children is now regarded as unethical. Strange situation
experiment was criticized on ethical grounds, due to the distress caused to the children on
separation of the parent. Furthermore, the cultural variations of the experiments that were carried
out in strange situations did not take into consideration the influences of cultural differences on the
degree of separation anxiety. In this case, it was unlikely that the children suffered any prolonged
effects of the distress. However, if we look into genie’s case, although researchers had
communicated with her, taught her sign language, and even put her in a friendly-environment where
care was also being provided for Genie, an ethical issue that can be seen is how Genie was not able
to withdraw from the study due to her limited use of language and mental state. Another major
issue that is clearly shown is confidentiality. Even though her name was kept anonymous her study
was exposed to the entire world to read about her case. Not only was it considered unethical
because of confidentiality and her inability to withdraw and consent, researchers had personal
attachments to Genie. This would be inappropriate for researchers; which leads to the next question
of objectivity and the aims of the study.
 other cases prove more serious in terms of the possible implications of unethical research. The
case of Little Albert (Watson and Rayner, 1920) is an example of where a lack of informed consent
lead to reduced protection of harm. In this case, the child was knowingly subjected to
psychological harm in the form of conditioning to fear of a neutral stimulus, and withdrawn from
the experiment when his mother became aware of the true proceedings. This therefore meant
that the researchers were not able to desensitize the child in order to eliminate his fear. It is
difficult to establish the long term effects of research like this, as once the child is withdrawn it is
difficult to measure the harm done, however Watson and Rayner concluded that if the effects had
not diminished within 31 days they were likely to be long lasting.

Based on this, the Medical Research Council advises that children should only be used in research
if adults cannot provide the same knowledge, and that the research results will be beneficial to
children (Medical Research Council, 1991). As well as this, it recommends that the research must
be approved by the relevant authoritative body, and that either the child or an adult on the child’s
behalf has given consent for the participation. According to DHHS (1991) individuals become able
to consent to participation at the age of 18, therefore until this point, informed consent must be
obtained from a parent or legal guardian. In this case, the researcher must be careful to observe
the participant for signs of distress or unwillingness to participate.

Overall, it seems that there are benefits to using children in research- in the cases above
significant findings were made in the areas of attachment formation and conditioning, however
both also demonstrate the risks of not fully accounting for the vulnerability of the participants and
the effects this could have, and this needs to be considered in all research.