THE DATA-COLLECTION DILEMMA - AN ETHICAL ISSUE FOR ALL PSYCHOLOGICAL-RESEARCH

There is an apparent conflict between a key precept of scientific meth od and art apparent requirement of ethical behaviour, Ail of the stand ard scientific procedures result in repeated observations. This may be done by sampling from a large population of people or situations, by making many observations from each individual, or by repeating experim ents a number of limes, On the other hand, provisions of codes of ethi cal behaviour; such as that adopted by the Psychological Society of ir eland, emphasise the importance, for research psychologists, of minimi sing the number of participants or the number of times an experiment i s carried out. In this papar, some of the justifications for both the ''scientific approach'' and the ''ethical approach'' are outlined, and a way of resolving the apparent paradox is outlined. This resolution depends on research issues being set in their social context, rather t han being dealt with in the formulaic manner which is generally used, and on, the social and scientific value of a research programme being a conspicuous part of the research design.