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Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Life-Span Developmental Psychology


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Ethics and Scientific Integrity

One goal of the Developmental program is to familiarize students with professional ethics regarding research and teaching and with institutional policies and procedures for the preparation, review, and approval of research protocols.  To accomplish this goal, students are given both formal and informal training in professional ethics and scientific integrity, and their professional ethics and scientific integrity are evaluated in the Developmental faculty’s annual evaluation of each student's progress.

  1. Either the new graduate student orientation or the first-year Professional Development Seminar includes a guest lecture by a member of the University's Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Research Subjects (IRB) on research ethics and procedures for preparing IRB protocols.  Rules on authorship, plagiarism, proper referencing of primary and secondary sources, procedures for obtaining research participants, and general professional conduct are covered in other lectures.

  1. The student's first-year research involvement may include training in the ethical conduct of research and may include writing an IRB protocol, with guidance from the faculty supervisor.  Other aspects of appropriate ethical and professional research procedures are usually taught informally during this experience.  The master's thesis and doctoral dissertation research projects involve additional informal instruction about the ethics of research through designing and conducting the studies and writing the IRB protocols under faculty supervision.  Students who conduct animal research receive instruction and experience in writing protocols for the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC)

  1. Students may take a 1-credit seminar, Ethical Issues in Psychology, taught by faculty in the Department’s clinical program.

  1. Ethical issues are discussed in the required developmental courses that students normally take during their first two years in the program.  Methodological Issues in Developmental Psychology includes sections on ethical issues and scientific integrity, and the assigned readings include the American Psychological Association Ethical Principles in the Conduct of Research with Human Participants and the Ethical Principles of the Society for Research in Child Development.  This seminar also covers ethical concerns related to various research methodologies more informally.  The four required age-period courses cover ethical concerns in the context of learning about research in these age periods and in the context of preparing a research proposal, which is normally a requirement in each of these courses.

  1. Students who serve as teaching assistants in the Department are required to attend a teaching workshop before the beginning of classes in the Fall semester of their first year.  One section of this workshop is devoted to ethical considerations in dealing with students and includes discussion of appropriate instructor conduct, fairness in grading, and handling student misconduct.  First-time lecturers are additionally required to take a one semester course on teaching, which includes extensive discussion of ethical issues in teaching and student-instructor relations.