Ethical Change and How To Make It Last

In 2015, the Hoffman Report criticised the American Psychological Association's (APA) complicity in the torture of inmates at Guantanamo Bay. The APA apologised in an email to its members and spoke of the need to make sure something like that never happened again. The thing is, this was not the first time psychologists had chosen to serve the needs of the state. There is a long and dark history of psychology informing various governments on propaganda, torture and mind control. And so much of the power of advertising comes from what psychologists tell the industry will work on us. Is this ethical? Should psychologists serve society instead? If you think so, how should they go about it? Or perhaps psychologists should just produce data and not involve themselves in policy.

I am involved in the research of older adults. Specifically, I am looking at ways to improve their wellbeing. I should add no older adult has ever asked me to do this. Yes, they sign consent forms, but they don't know at the outset what it is I am looking for. If I find something useable and this influences policy, they won't all be consulted. Maybe I should just mind my own business?

It's not even as simple as I just implied. Communities of people are, by their very natures, resistant to change (Wiesenfeld, 1996). This is especially so when change is imposed by an outsider. A lot of very well-meaning community projects only have short-lived effects for this very reason. When the researcher leaves, everything goes back to normal. My own research, which uses poetry reading in groups, was very successful. What bothers me, though, is that I have had to keep going back as a volunteer to keep the group going long after the last data was collected. I enjoy it; that's not the point, though. What is the point is that I can't help wondering the project cannot be a success so long as it needs me, an outsider, to maintain it.

So what to do?

There is a type of research called Participatory Action Research (PAR). PAR confronts a community’s resistance to change directly by making the researched into the researchers. Formerly used in poor countries, PAR is increasingly being employed in wealthier countries today. This is particularly so in mental health and has become a principal tool of the Psychiatric Survivors Movement: a group of psychiatric service users (current and former), which itself emerged from the US civil rights movement (Corrigan, Roe, Tsang, 2011). The purpose of the movement was for mental health patients to assume more power for themselves from the professionals. PAR was ideally suited to this end as it involves the subjects of the research in evaluating, planning and implementing the services they use (Baum, MacDougall & Smith, 2006).

Although PAR is increasing in popularity, resistance to it is impeding its progress. As a form of research, PAR is time-consuming and can be complicated. It also relies on partnerships with local communities and policy makers who need to embrace and learn PAR research methods. Moreover, competing interests need to be continually negotiated. Not least of of which is the task of encouraging professionals to relinquish some of their power and authority.

Indeed, power relationships, defined by Foucault as interactions between people, practices of institutions and use of knowledge, are at the heart of PAR. Wallerstein (2000) who researched health initiatives in New Mexico, USA, reported that the re-negotiation of power relationships between communities and institutions required fundamental organisational change to accommodate this new paradigm. This, in turn, necessitated a process of critical self-reflection and a closer examination of political and community interests, different priorities regarding research and differences in interpretation of findings.

Empowerment evaluation emerged from PAR as a system of encouraging self-determination among individuals and communities. It has the benefit of being highly flexible, allowing it to be applied in a wide variety of settings, it requires the collaboration of those being researched and it lends itself to, indeed requires, qualitative and quantitative research methods (Fetterman, 1994). One such use of empowerment evaluation is the Accelerated Schools Project (Levin, 1988) for disadvantaged children. This project involved parents, teachers and managers to design a more effective educational setting.

Key to empowerment is self determination. Fetterman (1994) states that self determination requires the ability to recognise needs, identify goals, work out a strategy for achieving them and make use of resources available to them. It is important for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, however, to be supported institutionally for self determination implies risk. An individual taking responsibility for his or her own life course must face the possibility of failure and its consequences. For this reason, such an approach requires the involvement of the institutions who exist to protect those individuals. Particularly, what is needed is a philosophical change to the institution’s view of itself, moving from a controlling power to that of a facilitator and emancipator.

Although Participatory Action Research is necessarily complex and gives rise to unique challenges, it does offer psychology an opportunity to address the ethical issues for which it has been criticised. It allows researchers to avoid the dilemma of whether they are working to serve society or the state as it engages policymakers, communities and individuals equally in the process of identifying aims, interpreting findings and implementing recommendations. And since they interpret the data and agree what to do with it, change is more likely to be accepted by the people it will affect the most. 

References

Baum, F., MacDougall, C., & Smith, D. (2006). Participatory action research.Journal of epidemiology and community health, 60(10), 854-857.

Corrigan, P. W., Roe, D., & Tsang, H. W. (2011). Challenging the stigma of mental illness: Lessons for therapists and advocates. John Wiley & Sons.

Fetterman, D. M. (1994). Empowerment evaluation. Evaluation practice,15(1), 1-15.

Hoffman, D. H. (2015). Report to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association: Independent Review Relating to APA Ethics Guidelines, National Security Interrogations, and Torture.
Levin, H. M. (1988). Accelerated schools for at-risk students. CPRE.

Wallerstein, N. (2000). A participatory evaluation model for Healthier Communities: developing indicators for New Mexico. Public health reports,115(2-3), 199.

Wiesenfeld, E. (1996). The concept of “we”: A community social psychology myth?. Journal of Community Psychology, 24(4), 337-346.