Debriefing in Psychology Research: Evidence of a Malleable Ethics Principle

Debriefing is, and has been, a necessary ingredient in psychological research, however, very little is truly known about its history, its purposes, its forms, and actual deployment. The aim of this research is to uncover exactly what debriefing is—what it is today, what it was in the past, and how its definition and purposes have changed through time. This research contains three channels of study to examine debriefing: a historical study of research methods textbook literature, an examination of current research institution’s IRB protocols, and an analysis of 1960’s survey responses collected by the APA discussing ethical issues in psychology at that time. These three primary data sets provide an understanding into the complex and unsystematic history of debriefing. This research finds debriefing to be defined by its purposes and those purposes to be vast, often vague, and multifaceted.