Deception

According to Webster's Dictionary, deception is the act of making a person believe what is not true; that [Page 183]is, misleading someone. The use of deception in survey research varies in degree. Typically, its use by researchers is mild and is thought to cause no harm to survey respondents and other research subjects. At times, however, the use of deception has been extremely harmful to research subjects. Thus the nature of deception involved in research must be carefully considered. Currently, contemporary researchers in the academic and government sectors submit research proposals to their institutional review board (IRB) primarily to ensure that research participants are protected from harm. In the commercial sector in the United States, this process may not be followed as closely.

It is not uncommon in survey research that some deception occurs, especially in the form of not telling respondents in advance of data collection what is the actual purpose of the study being conducted. The justification for this type of deception is the fact that telling respondents of the actual study purpose in advance of gathering data from them is likely to bias their responses.

For example, psychologists studying differences in thought patterns of depressed and nondepressed individuals may use mild deception in the form of omission of information to avoid sensitizing the subjects to the purpose of the study and thereby biasing the findings. For example, one study conducted by Carla Scanlan in 2000 did not disclose to subjects that the purpose of administering a particular screening questionnaire was to identify depressed and nondepressed subjects; the questionnaire was an untitled version of the Beck Depression Inventory—II (BDI-II), which asked subjects to read 21 sets of statements and choose the statement in each set that best described how she or he had been feeling for the past 2 weeks, including today. The consent form merely stated that the participant would fill out various questionnaires in order to determine for which experiments subjects qualified. Later, subjects were told that the purpose of this particular research project was to study the emotional state of students coming to college for the first time. After data collection and data analysis were completed, a written summary of the results was provided to those interested in the outcome. This debriefing process was complete and disclosed the purposes of the research. If the purpose of the research had been fully disclosed to participants beforehand, data collection would have been compromised.

In another example, in 2006, Scott Keeter conducted several studies in order to investigate whether cell phone only individuals differed from individuals who had landlines. That goal was not disclosed at the outset of the call; some of the questions were political in nature and others were demographic. The purpose of the call was given as a political survey, although the real intent was to investigate how cell only individuals differed from landline users. In this example, failing to disclose this purpose harmed no one and preserved the integrity of the survey responses, and it was deemed that no debriefing was necessary.

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