Ethical Transgressions of School Psychology

Throughout the study entitled: Ethical Transgressions of School Psychology Graduate Students: A Critical Incidents Survey,” (Tyron,2000,n.pg.) there were many unethical mistakes made; the most important one has to do with confidentiality. While conducting the research, participants were allowed to “[transport] files for fellow student[s]” (Tyron, 2000, n.pg.). In doing so, they “left the files in a public place and [they] were lost including confidential information” (Tyron,2000,n.pg.) and allowed other subjects to “[overhear] negative comments” (Tyron,2000,n.pg.). Here, facilitators were extremely careless and irresponsible.
According to Principle E of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) code of conduct “respect for people’s rights and dignity” is of the utmost importance and serves to protect individual’s “privacy, confidentiality, and self-determination” (APA,2018,n.pg). On this basis alone, no information that could compromise confidentiality should have ever been breached. Because it is possible that some of these individuals read other subject’s sensitive information, bias has very likely been introduced based on individual opinion. Not only this, but since data was lost, findings were invalid as it was not fully able nor was it capable of capturing due to the fact that there information is missing.