Exam 5: Ethical Issues in Social Work Research

Concealing the nature of the study from those being observed violates the norm of voluntary participation.

What ethical guideline(s)is are violated in the following study? A child therapist thinks the new,untested psychotherapy she recently developed is more effective than physician-prescribed medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.To research the effectiveness of her therapy,she tells parents that the therapy replaces the need for the medications and then provides the therapy to half of her clients,without telling parents about the study or which treatment group their child is in.

When names are removed from questionnaires and are replaced with identification numbers so that only the researcher can later link a response to a name,the researcher should tell the respondent that the information is

Once people are told that their participation in a research study is voluntary,there are no ethical problems.

It is often as important to report that variables are not related as to report that they are related.