Iheanacho, Rowland A. E.
Oyo-Ita, Margaret E.
Ofoegbu, Jude U.
Akpan, Nsikan A.
Article History
Received: 7 August 2022
Accepted: 6 June 2023
First Online: 26 August 2023
Ethical approval
: Introduction: The research on “Family psychological wealth, peer pressure and corruption tendencies among adolescent students in Calabar Metropolis, Cross River State, Nigeria” was conducted in line with the ethical guidelines endorsed by the British Psychological Society (BPS) and American Psychological Association (APA) on research with human participants. The major issues addressed include confidentiality, protection from harm, informed consent, deception and debriefing. Ethical approval: The ethical guidelines for research involving human participants as approved by the Ethical Committee of the Department of Educational Foundations, University of Calabar, were also adhered to by the researchers. Confidentiality: The participants were informed beforehand that the information they would give would be used strictly for the research and would not be disclosed to any other person or authority. There were no provisions in the questionnaire for the names of the participants and their schools. Participants were also not required to write their names or that of their school on the instrument, rather alphabets and codes were used. Distribution of the questionnaire was done in the presence of teachers and the respondents were required to sit at a reasonable distance from one another to prevent them from seeing the response of their colleagues. To enhance their dignity, they were informed that they were no right or wrong answers but they should give honest responses to the items in the questionnaire. The instruments were collected immediately after completion in no particular order. Protection From Harm: To protect the participants from any psychological harm, the researchers avoided questions that may embarrass them or invade their privacy. Questions were general in nature and were designed to establish the differences between the families of the participants in terms of family psychological wealth and peer pressure. However, in the case of corruption tendencies, questions were couched using the projective technique to elicit responses from the participants. For example, having many boyfriends/girlfriends is a way of having a variety of fun; there is nothing wrong with assisting my friends in the exam hall to pass the examination. This was to avoid embarrassing the respondents who would be unwilling to accept their disposition to corruption. As a consequence, the projective techniques removed the burden of guilt from the respondents. Deception: The adoption of the projective technique could be seen as deception as the participants would not feel guilty if they responded positively to the items on corruption tendencies. Accordingly, those who gave positive responses were absolved from any form of stigma. Debriefing: The reason for employing deception was explained to the school principals and participants at the end of the exercise.
: The researchers wrote letters to the principal of each of the schools, chosen for the study, seeking their permission to use their students in the study. Copies of the questionnaire were attached to the letter for their perusal and the aims and objectives of the research were fully explained. As an additional measure, the researchers met each principal physically to explain further and address any concerns that they may have. Each student also received a written request for participation in which the purpose of the research was explained. Further clarifications and explanations were made before the participants began responding to the items in the questionnaire. As they were responding to the questionnaire items, further clarifications were made as regards the items they did not understand clearly. The respondents were informed that participation was optional and that they were free to withdraw at any point from the exercise. Such action would not incur any penalties or upset the researchers.
: The authors declare no competing interests.