Prison and Dissertations
On August 14, 1971 was the first day of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Read on to find out what six days in prison has to do with your dissertation…
The Stanford Prison Experiment investigated the effect of personality traits on abusive behavior in prison. The principal investigator, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, randomly assigned roles of prisoner or guard to each of 24 participants, with 9 participants and three alternates for each role.
The experiment was supposed to take place over a period of two weeks. After just one day, there was a prison revolt. The guards subdued the prisoners with the use of fire extinguishers. They then began using psychological tactics and physical punishments.
The guards removed mattresses, forcing the inmates to sleep on the concrete floor.
The inmates were forced to relieve themselves into buckets in their cells, which the guards subsequently refused to empty.
One prisoner was locked in a dark closet, and the guards coerced the other prisoners to bang on the door and shout at him.
After six days, Dr. Zimbardo halted the experiment at the behest of one of his graduate students. He later noted that she was the only person, out of dozens who observed the experiment, to question the morality of continuing the experiment for the full two weeks. Most of the guards were upset when the experiment was terminated early.
So… What does all of this have to do with my dissertation?
There are several implications, but let’s go with the most obvious one. The Stanford Prison Experiment led to a re-examination of the ethical considerations by which researchers are expected to abide. It also led to an external review of all studies involving human subjects. In the U.S., the body that undertook this responsibility became know as the Institutional Review Board, or IRB.
Students often worry about having their studies rejected by the IRB. My advice for avoiding IRB entanglements is the same as my advice for designing your study in the first place… Keep it simple!
Stick to a tried-and-true research design. Survey your participants once and evaluate the data. Or, interview your participants once and analyze the transcripts.
Avoid using protected groups as participants. This means that you should not recruit children, prisoners, the mentally infirmed, or pregnant women to participate in your study. You can use data collected by others from the groups, e.g. school data pertaining to minor students. Or, you can use participants who work with members of a protected class. For example you can ask teachers about their minor students or counselors about the mentally infirmed.
If you’re unsure if your study allows participants the opportunity to refuse to participate, you could have a problem with the IRB.
If your study doesn’t allow participants the ability to easily discontinue their participation at any time, you could have a problem with the IRB.
Obviously, if you choose to involve children, inmates, mentally incompetent individuals, or pregnant women as participants, the IRB will scrutinize your study much more carefully, causing unnecessary delay.
You should also be careful that supervisors or other authority figures aren’t unintentionally (or intentionally) pushing those under their authority to participate.
I even know of one example of an IRB finding peer pressure that was neither instigated by nor under the control of the researcher to be unacceptable obstacle to informed consent.
