Ethics and Scientific Standards
Apply current BPS principles and concrete protections throughout planning, conduct and reporting.
How to study Higher Psychology
Build each answer from accurate psychological knowledge, named evidence, application to behaviour, analysis and justified evaluation.
Core concepts
Concept 1
respect, competence, responsibility and integrity
Exam cue: Identify the specific risk before proposing a protection.
Concept 2
informed consent and right to withdraw
Exam cue: Design withdrawal so participants can exercise it in practice.
Concept 3
confidentiality and anonymity
Exam cue: Protect identity in raw data, report text and appendices.
Concept 4
protection from harm
Concept 5
deception and debriefing
Concept 6
assignment restriction on participants under 16
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Treating consent as a signature with no meaningful information.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic claims, unsupported causation and generic evaluation disconnected from the named evidence.
Promising anonymity when researchers can identify participants.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic claims, unsupported causation and generic evaluation disconnected from the named evidence.
Assuming debriefing automatically makes deception acceptable.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic claims, unsupported causation and generic evaluation disconnected from the named evidence.
Memory anchors
BPS principles
Respect, competence, responsibility and integrity guide the current assignment.
Informed consent
Participants receive enough understandable information to choose freely.
Right to withdraw
Participants can leave and know what happens to their data.
Confidentiality
Identifiable information is protected and reporting avoids revealing participants.
Protection from harm
Risk should not exceed what is justified and must be actively minimised.
Assignment participant age
The current task states that candidates must not use participants under 16.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
What does informed consent require?
What does the right to withdraw include in the course guidance?
Answer all questions to submit.
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
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