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Ethical Principles
As a psychology student, you need to be aware
of the importance of ethics in our profession. Ethical principles govern
every activity in which psychologists engage, including: teaching,
research, assessment, and therapy. We recommend that you be familiar with
the ethical principles of psychologists as published by APA in
2002.
The APA Code of Conduct can be accessed by
going to the following link: http://www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html
What are some of the implications of these
guidelines for you as students? First, we faculty are responsible for
being ethical in our teaching. And we take it as one of our
responsibilities to teach you about ethical principles. Second, you will
not participate in nor conduct psychological research that has not been
reviewed and approved by an ethics committee. Presently, that committee
consists of the psychology faculty. Third, you must conduct yourself
properly by knowing your limitations. Do not let your activities exceed
your knowledge and training. For example, this is important to remember
when it comes to issues such as assessment and therapy. At the
undergraduate level, you get some exposure to such activities but you are
not yet trained and qualified to interpret tests, do psychological
diagnoses, and conduct therapy. Fourth, there will be occasions, like
during an internship, in which it will be critical for you to maintain
confidentiality regarding personal information on a client.
You can see, then, from these examples that
the ethical principles by which psychologists must operate are relevant
for you, too. The next section on plagiarism offers one more very
relevant example.
Plagiarism & Academic Honesty
Just as psychologists must be ethical
in the writing and publication of their research, so must you, the
student, be ethical in your writing. Each instructor will have his or her
guidelines for dealing with academic dishonesty but everyone will agree
on this much: Plagiarism is dishonest. Plagiarism is the use of ideas or
words passed off as yours when they are not. When you do use other
people's ideas and words, credit must be given to the original author(s).
You do this, in APA style, by citing the author by name as well as the
year of publication and, if a direct quote, the page number. The complete
bibliographic detail is then provided in the reference section. It is
certainly reasonable and appropriate to paraphrase what someone else
said, but if you do, cite the original source. And make sure it is indeed
a paraphrasing. Direct quotes, in which you cite someone verbatim, must
be set off in quotation marks. Furthermore, there are appropriate and
inappropriate ways to paraphrase. Specifically, it is inappropriate, when
paraphrasing1 to maintain the original author's words and sentence
structures. Please consult the C-SC's writing manual (available from Dr.
Hammer) for additional tips on how to avoid plagiarism.
-- Updated August 01, 2007 (GLB)
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