At the time of this study, there were no strict ethical guidelines for conducting psychological research.
Most organizations have a human subject committee that reviews all proposed research.
At times it can take up to three-five months before a research proposal is approved. The primary goal of the Human Subjects Committee is to protect the participants. Thus, the researcher is required to obtain an informed consent from the participants prior to collecting the data and debrief the participants after completing the study. In addition, the researcher needs to keep all data collected confidential. This page of The Psi Cafe provides links to general ethics in psychological research as well as information regarding animal and child research.