| Course | PS598 Master's Capstone in Psychology |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 8 |
| Paper type | Ethics and measurement paper |
| Length | About 1,100 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MS in Psychology |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PS598 Unit 8
Consent in the Week Grades Feel Like Everything: A PS598 Unit 8 Paper on Ethics and the Measurement Strategy for a Pre-Exam Writing Study
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
PS598: Master's Capstone in Psychology
Unit 8 Ethics and Measurement Paper
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The writer, the college and the planned study are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.
Why Ethics Is Central Here
The participants are community college students in a course that decides whether many of them will be admitted to nursing. The study takes place immediately before a graded exam, and I coordinate the tutoring center many of them use. Each of these facts creates a risk: students may feel pressured to participate, may worry that their choice affects their grades and may experience the writing exercise as an added stressor. The proposal must address each risk before the Institutional Review Board reviews it.
The Belmont Principles
Three ideas from the Belmont Report shape everything that follows: respecting people as decision makers, doing more good than harm and spreading research burdens fairly (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979). Respect for persons requires informed, voluntary consent. Beneficence requires minimizing harm and maximizing benefit. Fairness asks who bears the risks of a study and who stands to gain from it.
Voluntary Participation
The APA Ethics Code requires that participation be voluntary and that psychologists take steps to protect prospective participants from adverse consequences of declining or withdrawing, especially when participants are students or subordinates (American Psychological Association, 2017). In this study, instructors will not recruit, will not know who consents and will not see any study data except exam scores they already hold. Recruitment will take place during the first week of class by a research assistant from outside the course, who will explain the study while instructors leave the room. Students who decline will still receive an envelope on exam day, but theirs will contain a blank page and an invitation to sit quietly for ten minutes, so no one can tell who is participating.
A student who says no must be invisible on exam day, or the word voluntary means nothing.
Informed Consent
Students will read, in plain language, that the project compares short writing tasks before exams, that students will be randomly assigned to one of two prompts, that participation involves two brief questionnaires and permission to use one exam score and that participation will not affect grades. Because telling students the hypothesis could change their responses, the form will describe the purpose in general terms and a debriefing will explain the full design after the exam. The APA code permits withholding some information when it is justified by the study's value and when participants are debriefed promptly (American Psychological Association, 2017).
Risks and Benefits
The main risk is that writing about difficult feelings just before an exam could increase distress for some students. The self-compassion prompt asks students to write kindly to themselves about their worries, which existing research suggests is unlikely to cause harm, and the neutral prompt carries minimal risk. To reduce risk further, the prompt will invite but not require students to name worries, and the debriefing sheet will list the college's counseling center and tutoring center. Potential benefits include a brief, free exercise some students may find helpful, and the knowledge gained may help future students.
Justice
The study will not exclude any group of students who are enrolled in the course, and both conditions will be offered to all students after the study ends: the self-compassion prompt will be shared with every section before the second exam, so no one is denied a potentially useful tool.
Privacy
Scale responses will be linked to exam scores through a study code, and the name-to-code key stays with the research assistant alone until scores are attached, then goes through the shredder. Files will live on the college's password-protected research drive. Published findings will cover groups only, never a section so small that a reader could guess who is in it.
Measurement Strategy
The order of measurement matters for both ethics and validity. In week one, consenting students will complete the 12-item Self-Compassion Scale Short Form, which Raes et al. (2011) found to correspond closely to the full scale, using the total score as the authors recommend. On exam day, students will write for ten minutes, then take the exam. As each student hands in the exam, a half sheet with the anxiety items asks how the last fifty minutes felt; Cassady and Johnson (2002) designed it to capture the cognitive worry that interferes with performance. Exam scores will be obtained from instructors one week later.
Measuring anxiety after the exam rather than before avoids prompting students to focus on their anxiety just before testing, which could itself change performance, and ensures the measure reflects the exam experience. The tradeoff is that post-exam ratings may be colored by how students think they did, which the analysis will consider.
Debriefing
Within a week after the exam, every student in the course, participant or not, will receive a one-page debriefing by email and in class. It explains that the study compared a self-compassion writing exercise with a neutral writing task, why the purpose was described generally at the start and how to withdraw their data if they wish, with a deadline two weeks later. It includes a copy of the self-compassion prompt and contact information for the counseling center, the tutoring center and the principal investigator. Students who withdraw will have their scale responses deleted and their exam scores removed from the data set.
Responding to Distress
If a student appears distressed during the writing, the research assistant will quietly offer the option to stop, and the student may still take the exam as usual. Any student who writes about thoughts of self-harm will be contacted privately by a licensed counselor on the college staff within one business day; this procedure will be stated in the consent form so students know their writing is not completely private if their safety is at risk. The research assistant will be trained in this procedure before recruitment and will have the counselor's direct number for exam days.
Conclusion
The proposal addresses the ethical risks of researching students before a high-stakes exam through the Belmont Report's principles and the APA Ethics Code: recruitment by an outside assistant, invisible refusal, honest consent with debriefing, minimal-risk prompts, shared benefits and coded data. The measurement strategy fixes the order and timing of each instrument, balancing validity with participants' welfare.
References
American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2002, amended effective June 1, 2010, and January 1, 2017). https://www.apa.org/ethics/code
Cassady, J. C., & Johnson, R. E. (2002). Cognitive test anxiety and academic performance. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 27(2), 270-295. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.2001.1094
National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (1979). The Belmont report: Ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Raes, F., Pommier, E., Neff, K. D., & Van Gucht, D. (2011). Construction and factorial validation of a short form of the Self-Compassion Scale. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 18(3), 250-255. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.702
Reading the PS 598 Unit 8 instructions
The eighth PS598 unit asks you to address research ethics and finalize the measurement strategy for your study. Identify the ethical risks specific to your participants and setting, including any power relationships. Apply recognized principles and code standards to each risk and describe the protection you will use. Explain informed consent, including what participants will be told, any information withheld and how they will be debriefed. Address risks and benefits, fairness and privacy. Describe how you will respond if a participant becomes distressed. Then set out the measurement strategy: when, how and in what order each variable will be measured, with the reasons for that order and any tradeoffs it creates.
Inside the PS598 Unit 8 example
The paper opens with the facts that make the study sensitive: a high-stakes course and a coordinator many students know. A section summarizes the Belmont principles. A voluntary participation section uses the APA code and describes outside recruitment and blank pages for those who decline, under a highlighted line about invisible refusal. Sections cover consent and withheld information, risks and benefits, justice through sharing the prompt with all sections and privacy through coding. A debriefing section and a distress procedure follow. A measurement section sets the order of every instrument and explains the post-exam timing of the anxiety scale and its tradeoff before the conclusion.
Where the points sit in the PS598 Unit 8 rubric
Instructors look for ethical risks identified specifically for the study's participants and setting, not a generic list. Each risk should be paired with a concrete protection tied to a principle or code standard. The strongest papers handle power relationships carefully, for example by making participation invisible to instructors. Informed consent should be described honestly, including any information withheld and the debriefing that follows. Attention to distress, fairness and privacy shows thoroughness. A measurement strategy with a justified order and an acknowledged tradeoff connects ethics to method. Accurate references for the Belmont Report, the APA code and the scales complete the paper. A named person responsible for each protection makes the plan reviewable by an IRB.
PS598 Unit 8 help from the desk
The most common weakness in ethics sections is a list of standard phrases, such as informed consent will be obtained, with no description of how. Another is ignoring the relationship between the researcher and participants, especially when they are students in a course the researcher influences. Students often forget debriefing when they withhold the hypothesis, or forget a plan for distress. Measurement strategies frequently list instruments without timing or order. Before submitting, check that each risk has a named protection, that a participant who declines cannot be identified, that the debriefing has a date and content and that every measure has a time and a reason for its position.
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Share your study and the instructions with the rubric. A custom paper covers ethics and the measurement plan for your study. Delivery is within 24-48h, with the first free. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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PS598 Unit 8 questions, answered
What ethical issues arise in research with students?
Voluntary participation, pressure from instructors, privacy of grades and risks from any intervention.
Does a proposal need IRB approval?
Approval is needed before data collection; the proposal should describe how risks will be handled.
What is a measurement strategy?
The plan for when, how and in what order each variable is measured.
Where can I find a free PS598 Unit 8 sample paper?
The PS598 Unit 8 ethics and measurement paper for research with nursing prerequisite students is printed above.
How does the PS598 Unit 8 sample keep refusal invisible?
Students who decline still receive an envelope on exam day, containing a blank page and an invitation to sit quietly for ten minutes.