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Help! Daughter's university doing flawed study tying parents perceived illness to students neuroses

TiredSam

The wise nematode hibernates
Messages
2,677
Location
Germany
To me it's not that this paper is going to end up in any big medical journal. It surely won't. It's what it represents in other costs. Thousands of students go through this Psych class a year. This research project is fully representative of what this professor believes. My daughter has students in her class who are going on to become psychologists, social workers, therapists, and others in the Pre-med program. This professor's beliefs are going to influence how they treat and interact with people like us in the future.

Firstly I would not respond or engage at all. All surveys have a percentage of people who don't respond and you are perfectly entitled to be in it. If you decide to respond because of the credit blackmail thing (which is disgraceful and should be challenged or ignored too) then why don't you just make up whatever answers you feel like, including those that would be most likely to bugger up the professor's pet theory? You have no duty to answer any questions at all, and if they blackmail you into it under threat of your daughter's credits, any answers you give are under duress and unreliable anyway, so you can decide how or in what way they are unreliable. If they won't let you exercise your right not to respond, exercise your right to be an outlier. Fuck 'em.
 

Hutan

Senior Member
Messages
1,099
Location
New Zealand
I think it's really wrong of the university to make students' grades contingent on parental involvement. They are supposed to be helping young people become independent.

I think the very best thing would be if your daughter could negotiate to do a brief powerpoint presentation to her class on the issues with this study as an alternative for the grade credits. There is plenty to be said. Things like
  • coercion/ethics of free involvement
  • potential harm to students if parents refuse to cooperate/ harm to parent/child relationship
  • confidentiality
  • likelihood that a certain percentage of respondents will have attitudes like TiredSam's
  • issues with selection of participants in the studies that find personality issues linked to illness - people with an illness who volunteer for those studies aren't representative of the whole population with that illness.
  • the fact that medically unexplained symptoms don't equate to psychosomatic illness/ personality issues and the problems with blaming physical illness on parenting style e.g. your mitochondrial disease story would be very powerful, other examples in history. Autism and refrigerator mothers - how harmful that kind of thinking is, how it delays research that can find real answers
Your daughter would have to be quite amazing to do that, few first year uni students would be up for it. But, if she did, I think it would be a life-changing event for her and could change how her lecturers and fellow students think.

Yes, it might affect her grade for the course - but the lecturers would have to be quite brave to unfairly mark her down. And besides, a grade for Psych 101 isn't that life-determining.
 
Messages
3,263
Do a donkey vote... answer everything with not sure/not applicable.

The credit is for participating, not for giving sensible answers.

PS A donkey note is the term used in Australia for a voter who comes to the polling booth, but just fills in the boxes randomly. This kind of voting is quite common in Aus, because voting is compulsory... so those who have no clue or object to voting often do this.

Before you ask: yes, I think compulsory voting has a lot of strengths. Some will donkey vote, but many of the less advantaged members of society will make the effort to vote when they might not otherwise.
 

Richard7

Senior Member
Messages
772
Location
Australia
@Woolie re donkey votes they are also used when you are offered a false choice eg the franklin dam where the choice was between what you dont want and that other thing you don't want and 45% "voted informally".

I gather that the soviet union used to require a majority of votes to put someone in a position and that people used to take the pre-filled ballots and cross out the name so that really unpopular people failled to get in because the majority of voters voted informally.
 

Richard7

Senior Member
Messages
772
Location
Australia
re reading the first post it seems a donkey vote would be impossible at this stage, the choices are either withdraw consent or leave things as they are, and write a letter or don't.

If she is as you say not a psych major and you are worried about retaliation I guess you could withdraw consent after the end of the term (it does say you can do so at any time) and explain your reasons then.

I am afraid I cannot give any help the answers you need, I just do not know the research well enough.
 
Messages
3,263
re reading the first post it seems a donkey vote would be impossible at this stage
Oh, sorry, you're right. I leapt in without all the facts. And @TiredSam had already suggested a similar thing to me.

To be fair, its not unusual for Universities to offer extra credit for participation in studies. This is how Psyc departments get their samples for many postgrad research projects. The only other way is by paying participants (regular people tend not to want to volunteer their time for a study if it doesn't benefit them). So the idea is that the younger Psyc students sort of "pay it backwards" to benefit the more senior ones. Then if and when they get to be more senior, they get the benefit. Yes, this introduces certain biases in the sample, but then you have biases too if you pay people, they're just different biases.

We do this where I work. We're permitted to do it, as long as we: a) give students an alternative option for extra credit (something they can choose to do instead of being a participant); and b) ensure that participation has educational benefits (you have to provide a debrief at the end, to explain the study).

Granted, I've never heard of parents being roped in.
 
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Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
To be fair, its not unusual for Universities to offer extra credit for participation in studies. This is how Psyc departments get their samples for many postgrad research projects. The only other way is by paying participants (regular people tend not to want to volunteer their time for a study if it doesn't benefit them).

I am amazed that this is standard practice in psych departments, Woolie. In departments of medicine the use of staff as volunteers became a major issue some years ago and rules were brought in to ensure there was no blackmailing of students or staff to help with projects. I can see that if being involved has no particular relevance to personal health status it might be different for filling in questionnaires. However, this case looks totally unethical and I would have thought the sort of thing that would be considered against human rights if not contravening specific laws. As I mentioned before, if the hypothesis is that psychological interaction can harm health then by definition this sort of exercise can do harm - and presumably nobody ever checks up on that.
 

user9876

Senior Member
Messages
4,556
Firstly I would not respond or engage at all. All surveys have a percentage of people who don't respond and you are perfectly entitled to be in it. If you decide to respond because of the credit blackmail thing (which is disgraceful and should be challenged or ignored too) then why don't you just make up whatever answers you feel like, including those that would be most likely to bugger up the professor's pet theory? You have no duty to answer any questions at all, and if they blackmail you into it under threat of your daughter's credits, any answers you give are under duress and unreliable anyway, so you can decide how or in what way they are unreliable. If they won't let you exercise your right not to respond, exercise your right to be an outlier. Fuck 'em.

This points out the reason that rewards for taking part in a study can mislead especially when reports are subjective. I know someone who did a web-based study questionnaire with a reward of getting access to some information and quite a number of people just clicked through the same option on everything in order to get through to the information they were interested in.

It would be good to see the consent forms and also ask about ethical approval for the study. Then I would fill out the study - not at random but imagine a person that would invalidate the study and fill it out as them. If it ever gets published then point out the issues with the study.
 
Messages
3,263
In departments of medicine the use of staff as volunteers became a major issue some years ago and rules were brought in to ensure there was no blackmailing of students or staff to help with projects.
You are not allowed to use staff, students working underneath you, or anyone with a relationship to you where they might feel obligation (e.g. family member). The out clause is specifically for participation-for-extra-credt programmes, usually only at introductory level, and usually only a few hours participation max.

Students can choose their projects - there are usually dozens - and they must give informed consent. But the carrot is extra credit, not money.

I do work mainly with special populations, but I admit I often draw on our extra-credit programme to collect normative data. I get the students to do simple mental tasks like tapping, responding to button press tasks, that sort of thing. Perhaps it is unethical to do so, perhaps I ought to reflect on that. But here, I'm just describing the practice because I thought that might be useful information.