INTRODUCTION

Our aim in this chapter is to provide you with a broad overview of the different ethical codes used in Australia that psychological scientists and psychologists use to guide their work. As a psychology student you’re no doubt used to thinking about ethics as this underpins much of the foundational knowledge you learn in your degree. However, you may be unfamiliar with why ethics are important (although we hope not!) or when or how ethical codes are used. The first ethical code was developed by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and is known as The National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (NHMRC, 2018b) or the ‘NHMRC code’ or simply ‘the code’. This document consists of a series of guidelines that all researchers – including psychological scientists – need to follow. Australia is unique in that our researchers are governed by this code, but our psychologists are required to adhere to a different ethical code developed by the Australian Psychological Society. Countries such as the United Kingdom or Canada have a combined professional and research code of ethics.

To help you work your way through the chapter, we’ve divided it into several sections, including: ‘Why Do We Have Research Ethics?’, ‘Research Methodology and Risk Management’, ‘Recruitment and Data Collection’, ‘Data and Information Management’, and ‘Merit, Integrity, and Monitoring’. We will then provide a brief overview of the APS code to close the chapter off. Throughout the chapter, we’ll provide some case studies, pose questions for you to reflect on, and perhaps even test your ethical knowledge! Finally, the information contained in this chapter comes from an open access e-course that we wrote. If you have any questions about the e-course or want to use it in your course or program, please contact the authors directly.

WHY DO WE HAVE RESEARCH ETHICS?

The history of human experimentation is sometimes considered to be a dark one, with many documented examples of ill-conceived and inhumane medical and psychological experimentation on human beings. While considered ‘unethical’ by today’s standards, these experiments have led to the development and refinement of various national and international laws and guidelines that govern ethical human research.