Good Evening Class,
I hope you all are doing well! Welcome to Week Three! Time is certainly flying by,
For the discussion topic this week we were asked to formulate a professional letter to
our research advisor through the selection of one of the ethical dilemma scenarios.
In my discussion, I selected the last scenario about studying the induction processes
in military training and the perceived witness of bullying a new recruit. In my opening
letter to the research advisor, I provided an objective view and summary of the
perceived ethical dilemma and the subsequent background information of when the
dilemma was witnessed.
In my first recommendation to the research advisor, I referenced that section 1.03 of
the APA Ethical Code was perceived as impacted by this ethical dilemma due to the
researcher observing the conflicts of ethical behavior from the military institution
conflicting with that of our own code of ethical conduct (APA, 2017). The potential
solution towards working with this ethical dilemma would be to formally report the
incident through appropriate escalation channels so that both entities and
organizations can work through the ethical dilemma and create a case to study if an
ethical violation occurred. This type of section is paramount towards establishing
appropriate ethical behavior in that care must be taken to ensure that psychologists
and researchers are aware of when other organizations may have competing ethical
behaviors or standards that can impact our own ethical code.
The second recommendation to the research advisor that I referenced included a
reference to section 3.03 Other Harassment. This section specifically outlines that
psychologists or researchers do not engage in behavior that is demeaning in-nature
to those that they work with. My proposed solution in-alignment to this principle was
the recommendation to remove the staff members that were witnessed as harassing
the new recruit. The caveat to this recommendation is that there was a perceived
fear that by interacting with the staff members directly, the integrity of the research
project overall would become compromised. As such, careful removal of the staff
members by members of the same organization would help eliminate the recurrence
of an ethical dilemma until a case could be built and a review conducted on the
behavior. This also prevents the opportunity of this ethical dilemma to recur.
Overall, this was an excellent exercise in understanding the impacts of ethical
dilemmas and how ethical dilemmas should be formally reported in accordance with
the APA Ethical Conduct standards and parameters. I'm looking forward to receiving
feedback from the class! Thank you,
