Ethical Considerations

Ethical Considerations While conducting research studies, the American Psychological Association Ethical principles must be taken into account. This study has a few ethical issues that must be discussed including the use of children; especially children with developmental delays, privacy concerns, and other debriefing concerns for ABA therapies. When working with children in a research study, the child must have informed consent. Informed consent is the process of which the participant and the participants guardians are informed about the study and signs a form about the reason and purpose for the study, the methods that will be used, the requirements for participation. The form also states that the participation is voluntary, which allows the participant to leave and withdraw themselves from the study at any point without consequence (Bordens & Abbott, p. 198, 2013). This

According to the APA Ethical Guidelines, recording of any sort cannot occur without the consent of participants and in this case the participants parents or guardians (American Psychological Association, 2017). Another privacy concern is the disclosure of information that is annotated during the study, information that is necessary scientifically for the study should be notated to minimize intrusion on privacy of the participant (American Psychological Association, 2017). Another ethical issue of this study is the debriefing and explanation of results. According to the Behavior Analyst Certification Board ethical compliance code, the BCBA must explain assessment results of the study using language or other graphic displays of the data collected in an understandable way to the participants parents or guardians, this means that depending on who the BCBA is speaking with the information must be explained in a way they can understand (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, p.11, 2017).