ETHICS GUIDELINES A. THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (APA) D...

3. Ethics Guidelines a. The American Psychological Association (APA) developed guidelines for researchers to follow when conducting research involving human participants. b. Researchers must obtain informed consent from the participants prior to the start of the experiment. The participants must know in advance what will be involved in the experiment and what, if any, risks there might be. c. Researchers are responsible for the confidentiality of all the data collected from the participants in the experiment. d. After the experiment has been conducted the researcher is responsible for debriefing the participants. This means that the participants are informed of the experiment’s purpose and the methods that were used in the experiment. e. Deception is allowed in an experiment if telling the participants in advance about the expected outcome of the study could potentially alter the participants’ behavior and therefore invalidate the results of the experiment. i. When deception is used in research, the principle of informed consent is violated. This is why participants should have the option of withdrawing consent after they find out what the study is really about.