Ethical issues in the supervision of student research: A study of critical incidents.

Abstract

Professional psychologists (N = 57), most of whom were experienced researchers, described incidents (N = 144) in the supervision of student research that they believed presented ethical problems. Raters identified those incidents that did seem to present ethical problems and sorted them into categories. Although many of the incidents pertained to some aspect of fairness in authorship assignment, 8 additional categories of ethical problems were identified: incompetent supervision, inadequate supervision, supervision abandonment, intrusion of supervisor values, abusive supervision, exploitive supervision, dual relationships, and encouragement to fraud. Each of these ethical problems is discussed, along with several possible remedies. Many professional psychologists supervise student research. Watkins, Lopez, Campbell, and Himmell (1986), for example, found that this was an activity of approximately 30% of Division 17 members. Certainly faculty in doctoral programs are expected to supervise research, but so too are psychologists who are faculty in other educational contexts and even some who are in practice settings. Yet despite the occasional discussion of research supervision in the literature (e.g., Magoon & Holland, 1984), there has been almost no consideration of the ethical issues that may be involved. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association [APA], 1983) does provide general guidelines for authorship determination, but there are few empirical studies specific to the topic (e.g., Bridgwater, Bornstein, & Walkenbach, 1981; Costa & Gatz, 1990;