Ethical issues surrounding human participants research using the Internet

The Internet appears to offer psychologists doing research unrestricted access to infinite amounts and types of data. However, the ethical issues surrounding the use of data and data collection methods are challenging research review boards at many institutions. This article illuminates some of the obstacles facing researchers who wish to take advantage of the Internet's flexibility. The applications of the APA ethical codes for conducting research on human participants on the Internet are reviewed. The principle of beneficence, as well as privacy and confidentiality, informed consent, deception, and avoiding harm are all illustrated through the use of a hypothetical online study.     

Disclosing individual genetic results to research participants

Investigators and institutional review boards should integrate plans about the appropriate disclosure of individual genetic results when designing research studies. The ethical principles of beneficence, respect, reciprocity, and justice provide justification for routinely offering certain results to research participants. We propose a result-evaluation approach that assesses the expected information and the context of the study in order to decide whether results should be offered. According to this approach, the analytic validity and the clinical utility of a specific result determine whether it should be offered routinely. Different results may therefore require different decisions even within the same study. We argue that the threshold of clinical utility for disclosing a result in a research study should be lower than the threshold used for clinical use of the same result. The personal meaning of a result provides additional criteria for evaluation. Finally, the context of the study allows for a more nuanced analysis by addressing the investigators' capabilities for appropriate disclosure, participants' alternative access to the result, and their relationship with the investigators. This analysis shows that the same result may require different decisions in different contexts.     

Response bias associated with asking former study participants to assist in new research

To limit research costs, former parent-participants from a completed pediatric neurology study were asked to assist with new research on behavioral contributors to childhood injury. An evaluation of the response bias associated with this recontact effort showed that 224 parents who completed the survey did not differ from the 51 who failed to complete it in race, age, education, or income. Nonresponders were significantly less likely to be married than responders.     

Selective attention and avoidance on a pictorial cueing task during stress in clinically anxious and depressed participants

Although it is well established that attentional biases exist in anxious populations, the specific components of visual orienting towards and away from emotional stimuli are not well delineated. The present study was designed to examine these processes. We used a modified spatial cueing task to assess the speed of engagement and disengagement from supraliminal and masked pictorial cues depicting threat, dysphoria, or neutral content in 36 clinically anxious, 41 depressed and 41 control participants. Participants were randomly assigned to a stress or neutral condition. During stress, anxious participants were slow to disengage from masked left hemifield pictures depicting threat or dysphoria, but were quick to disengage from supraliminal threat pictures. Information processing in anxious participants during stress was characterized by early selective attention of emotional stimuli, occurring prior to full conscious awareness, followed by effortful avoidance of threat. Depressed participants were distinct from the anxious group, displaying selective attention for stimuli depicting dysphoria, but not threat, during the neutral condition. In sum, attentional biases in clinical populations are associated with difficulties in the disengagement component of visual orienting. Further, a vigilant-avoidant pattern of attentional bias may represent a strategic attempt to compensate for the early activation of a fear response.     

Ethical problems in register based medical research

The first main purpose of this paper is to identify and to distinguish between a number of problems and conflicts of interest in the area where medical personal registers are used in research, particularly when the registers are computerized. The second main purpose is to suggest and comment upon a method for solving or minimizing such conflicts of interest.     

Ethical analysis of research partnerships with communities

Community-researcher partnerships constitute one of the most important recent developments in biomedical ethics. The partnerships protect vulnerable communities within which research is conducted and help ensure that the communities benefit from the research. At the same time, they embody deep, core values about the social nature of persons and the value of community that significantly modify the radical individualism too often associated with the prevailing concepts of autonomy and respect for persons. This article examines the burgeoning literature on community-researcher partnerships to identify the main ways of thinking ethically about the obligations of investigators and the roles and rights of communities in scientific research. The paper helps to uncover the deep commonalities and differences that mark the current debate in this emerging arena of research ethics, a debate over the social nature of persons that is beginning to influence the understanding of other bioethical issues.