Contents

78 PART I: General Issuesa particular experimental procedure in the way the investigator intended(Blanck et al., 1992). For example, a study of how people respond to failure mayinclude tasks that are impossible to complete. If participants don’t judge theirperformance as a failure, however, the researcher’s hypothesis cannot be tested.Debriefing allows the investigator to find out whether participants judged theirperformance to be a failure or whether they recognized it was impossible forthem to succeed.When trying to learn participants’ perceptions of the study, researchersshouldn’t press them too hard. Research participants generally want to helpwith the scientific process. The participants may know that information maybe withheld from them in psychological research. They may even fear they will“ruin” the research if they reveal they really did know important details aboutthe study (e.g., the tasks really were impossible). To avoid this possible problem,debriefing should be informal and indirect. This is often best accomplishedby using general questions in an open-ended format (e.g., “What do you thinkthis study was about?” or “What did you think about your experience in thisresearch?”). The researcher can then follow up with specific questions about theresearch procedures. As much as possible, these specific questions should notcue the participant about what responses are expected (Orne, 1962).Debriefing also benefits researchers because it can provide “leads for futureresearch and help identify problems in their current protocols” (Blancket al., 1992, p. 962). Debriefing, in other words, can provide clues to the reasonsfor participants’ performance, which may help researchers to interpretthe results of the study. Researchers also can discover ideas for future researchduring debriefings. Finally, participants sometimes detect errors in experimentalmaterials—for instance, missing information or ambiguous instructions—and they can report these to the researcher during the debriefing. As we said,debriefing is good for both the participant and the researcher.Because the researcher is absent in an online research setting, an appropriatedebriefing process may be difficult. This aspect of Internet research adds to thelist of ethical dilemmas posed by this kind of research (Kraut et al., 2004). The factthat online participants can easily withdraw from the study at any time is particularlytroublesome in this regard. One suggestion is to program the experimentin such a way that a debriefing page is presented automatically if a participantprematurely closes the window (Nosek et al., 2002). When a study is finally completed,researchers can e-mail a report summarizing the study’s findings to theparticipants so that they can better understand how the study’s goals were relatedto the experimental outcome. Following an Internet study, a researcher may postdebriefing material at a website and even update these materials as new resultscome in (see Kraut et al., 2004).RESEARCH WITH ANIMALS• Animals are used in research to gain knowledge that will benefit humans,for example, by helping to cure diseases.• Researchers are ethically obligated to acquire, care for, use, and disposeof animals in compliance with current federal, state, and local laws andregulations, and with professional standards.