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mymmlan

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I've decided that I want to write a report in social psychology. I want to do a study on group size vs. helping behaviour (something like the bystander effect..), but I don't know how to do it.. Apparently there are a lot of ethical considerations that I need to think of, since informed consent would ruin the point of the experiment.

Anyone has any tips? or a better topic? :punish:

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There is actually a way around the whole informed consent part. First, let me state that you will need to make sure this is okay with your psychology teacher. Anyway, what you need to do is make your consent form state that you may decieve the person. Essentially, you make people sign a consent form where they agree to the fact that they may be told false information, etc.

You need to fine tune the choice of words, but if you do that, then your psychological study is still ethically correct. Also, the most important part to remember is that you need to have a full debriefing.

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This is going to be a very difficult topic to receive full marks on, as it may be difficult to create reasonable quantitative data upon which you can preform tests.

I did a simple Miller-type memory experiment, and that allowed easy recording of quantitative data, allowing me to perform tests for statistical significance, correlation, and also allowed predictions of future behavior.

Bystander effect would be very difficult to research, given your status as a psych student, limitations on money, materials, and time. I'm sure that it's possible to perform effective research in a social situation, but it may be easier if you can record data in a similar way to Milgram. (Electric-shock 'learning' testing - simulation of Nazi Germany).

I'd suggest you reconsider how you're going to go about collecting data, what sort of data you're collecting, and what you can do with the data. The compare this to the marking criteria, and make sure that you can fill all fields well. After that - have fun!

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I realise that it would be quite hard to receive full marks, but all the memory experiments are so boring! (no offense) I know we don't write our IAs in order to conduct mind-baffling research, but it feels boring to do a classical study. Then there is a great risk that the participants already know about the study, or that they 'see through' it during the experiment...

----But perhaps I should just resign and conform to the conventions.. (If I want full marks...)

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  • 2 months later...

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