Conducting experimental psychopathology research in an experimenter-guided online environment, part I : clinical and ethical considerations for potentially vulnerable participants / Allison Ouirnet, Ryan J. Ferguson, Amélie Burla, Olivia Gardam, Jeremy Queis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ouimet, Allison, author.

Ferguson, J., Ryan, author.

Burla, Amélie, author.

Gardam, Olivia, author.

Oueis, Jeremy, author.

Series:

SAGE research methods: doing research online.

SAGE research methods: doing research online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Participant observation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

London : SAGE Publications, Ltd., 2022.

Summary:

In our research lab, we focus on understanding the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional factors that contribute to anxiety and anxiety disorders. As such, we frequently use experimental methods to create anxiety among participants in the lab, enabling us to manipulate and measure hypothesized causal and maintaining factors, while managing ethically any participant distress. However, the COVID-19 pandemic required us to pause our in-person research, threatening to stall our research programs indefinitely. In this two-part case study series, we describe how we adapted two of our experiments to be administered online. We aimed to recreate the in-person laboratory experience (e.g., multimethod, experimenter guided) in an online virtual environment, by leveraging and integrating existing platforms (i.e., Zoom, Qualtrics, Inquisit Web). Although we frequently recruit undergraduate and community samples to test our participants, we have recently begun recruiting participants with clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder and specific phobia, so that we can compare their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with people who do not live with anxiety disorders. In the current case study, which is the first in a two-part series, we first outline how we managed several clinical and ethical considerations, with the goal of enabling researchers to design and implement data collection protocols for experiments with potentially vulnerable participants in the online laboratory environment. Clinical considerations included how to administer clinical interviews over Zoom; ethical considerations included how to support participants experiencing emotional distress. In Part II (Ferguson et al., 2022), we discuss how we handled multiple technological and practical considerations when conducting experimental research with undergraduate students and members of the general community. Indeed, there were some unanticipated benefits of conducting our research online (e.g., increasing access to participants in remote locations, eliminating travel costs), suggesting that having an online data collection option may be advantageous even postpandemic.

Notes:

Description based on XML content.

ISBN:

9781529604276 :

OCLC:

1301365096