Psychology

This will critically analyze the theoretical scenario of a psychology professor undertaking a clinical test on 15 humans ingesting a smart pill and 15 others not ingesting it. This is to explore the elements of proper psychological research. Each event will be analyzed line-by-line from the lens of psychological research standards. Each line is italicized as a subheading with its corresponding analysis. Meanwhile, the italicized keywords within the explanations will pertain to each specific element of proper psychological research that may have been violated in the professors study.
1. The professor asked 15 students in his Introductory Psychology class at McHenry County Community College to volunteer to take the smart pill at the start of the semester.

Assuming that the smart pill has already gone through the preclinical phase of laboratory testing with animals, usually rodents, the proper research standard for testing on humans is to provide informed consent and the basic elements of informed consent (Lipsky and Sharp, 2001, pp. 364-365). This requires full disclosure on the nature and possible psychological consequences or effects of the research on the participants (British Psychological Society, n.d.). The professor appears to have simply asked for volunteers thereby violating a basic ethical principle and government regulation in a psychological research.

Another principle that appears to have been violated is external equalization. This is an internal validity standard for a causal study like this one (DeCoster, 2001, p. 154, 17). External equalization pertains to providing some sort of benefit to some groups while withholding them from other groups (p. 17). The professors research volunteers, or representative sample, are his students, thus, effectively leaving out other groups in the study. The other groups in this case would be non-students of the professor.

2. At the end of the semester, he noted that the 15 students who took the pill received and average of A- for the course while the 15 students who did not take the pill received an average of B.
In this event, a set of 15 students took the pill while another set of 15 students did not take the pill. One principle of psychological research is construct validity. Construct validity pertains to which the variables in an experiment accurately and exclusively represent the corresponding theoretical constructs (p. 13). The result here would be inaccurate since the Placebo or Hawthorne Effects threaten the studys construct validity (p. 14). The placebo effect pertains to a well-known observation among experimenters that the mere expectation of something, in this case the smart pill, can improve the experiments subjects intelligence (p. 14). The standard to prevent the placebo effect from happening is to let all 30 students take the smart pill (p. 14). One set of 15 smart pills are actually the pill while a control dose or fake smart pills with no side effects should have been given to the control group of the other 15 students to negate the placebo effect (p. 15). This measure to counter the placebo effect is also known as the double blind study since each research subject does not know if the pill being ingested is the real thing or not.

Another construct validity threat is experimenter bias or administrator expectations (p. 14). Experimenter bias pertains to the scientific observation that the beliefs of research administrators can have profound influences on the datacollected, even whenmaking supposedly objective measurements (p. 14). Since the professor himself has been teaching the course, naturally, he will have a tendency to give higher grades to his favored students who had been ingesting his smart pill. Hence, the professor has experimenter bias.

3. He also noted that during the semester, the 15 students who took the pill had an average G.P.A. for all their courses whereas their average G.P.A. for the previous semester had been 3.0.
Here, the issue is internal validity. This refers to the plausibility of alternative causal explanations for the results of the study (p. 15). The threat here to the internal validity of the psychological research is Selection (p. 15). DeCoster defines selection as a threat to internal validity which occurs when different types of people in different levels of a between-subjects manipulation (p. 16).  DeCoster prescribes that in order to remove this threat, researchers must observe random assignment to conditions (p. 16). The professor in this case did not select his research subject at random but rather, he selected them based on a uniform G.P.A of 3.0.

4. Meanwhile, the 15 students who did not take the pill had an average G.P.A. of 2.8 for both semesters.

This description is another example of an internal validity threat which is resentful demoralization. Resentful demoralization refers to the behavior of research participants when they lose the motivation to perform well at the tasks that the study covers because of a perceived disadvantageous condition (p. 17). Since all 30 research participants are studying in the same class, their day-to-day interactions would have had made the possibility that each others G.P.A. would have been known to almost everyone. After all, the study was about the smart pill. The selective grouping of high performers versus average performers would have had created resentful demoralization among the average performers.

5. In addition, before the last class of the semester, he gave an IQ test to the 15 students who took the pill, and then after the last class of the semester, he gave the same IQ test to the 15 students who did not take the pill.

The situation that is described here is the construct validity threat of Order Effects. Order Effects refers to the effects of certain events or activities on the outcome of the test or experiment (p. 14). In the case of the 15 students who took the pill, their intelligence would have been sharper as they attended before the last class of the semester. This is a period when exams are usually given and students had to review for these exams. On the other hand, administering the IQ test after the last class simply meant that students have had just finished taking their exams. Most likely, the effect of a just concluded series of exams is lesser motivation to take another exam.

6. Those who took the pill averaged 122 on the test and those who did not take the pill averaged 118.
This is a good example of a statistical conclusion validity threat. Here, the Ceiling and Floor Effects threat is clearly represented (p. 18). The Ceiling and Floor Effect refers to the measurement of just the minimum and maximum boundaries and no in-between data is provided (p. 18). Measuring and showing the variations in the statistical results are important since these in-between data can provide information on the factors that may provide extreme responses (p. 18).

7. Finally, the professor noted that during the semester, 5 of the students who took the pill reported that they occasionally experienced either headaches or diarrhea.

This event basically indicates the principle of Unreliable Measurements as a threat to the statistical conclusion validity of a psychological research. The measurement of this data is unreliable since the professor did not establish tests to measure headaches and diarrhea.

Conclusion
After a line-by-line critical analysis of the theoretical case, the following concepts have been found which either represented a standard or threat to a proper psychological research 1) Informed consent 2) External equalization 3) Placebo Effect 4) Experimenter bias 5) Selection 6) Resentful demoralization 7) Order Effects 8) Ceiling and Floor Effects and 9) Unreliable Measurements. Conclusively, these fall into a general category of principles for a proper psychological research. These principles or standards are 1) Construct Validity 2) Internal Validity 3) Statistical Conclusion Validity and 4) External Validity.