What term refers to the practice of misleading participants to improve the validity of a study?

The practice of misleading participants to improve the validity of a study is referred to as deception in research. This technique is used primarily in situations where revealing the true nature of the study could influence the behavior or responses of participants, potentially skewing the results. By employing deception, researchers aim to create a more genuine environment for participants, allowing them to respond more naturally and thereby generating more reliable data.

Deception is often carefully considered and must be justified, as ethical guidelines in psychological research require participants to be informed that they are part of a study and to understand what participation entails as much as possible. Nonetheless, when the true nature of the research is concealed, researchers can obtain valuable insights that might otherwise be unavailable.

The other terms listed, such as informed consent, refer to the ethical obligation to provide potential participants with sufficient information about the study, including its purpose and procedures, to allow them to make an informed choice about their participation. The experimenter effect refers to biases introduced by the researcher’s expectations influencing the outcome of the study. An extraneous variable is any variable other than the independent variable that might affect the dependent variable, which researchers strive to control to avoid confounding results.