Decoding the Ethics Code: A Practical Guide for Psychologists

Celia B Fisher, who chaired the APA Ethics Code Task Force, offers this insider's guide on how students and seasoned professionals can effectively and ethically conduct themselves in the practice and science of psychology, avoid ethical violations of the Code, and, most importantly, preserve and protect the fundamental rights and welfare of those with whom they work.

Celia B. Fisher, PhD, Director of the Fordham University Center for Ethics Education and the Marie Ward Doty University Chair and Professor of Psychology, served as Chair of the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) Ethics Code Task Force responsible for the 2002 revision of the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct that, with the addition of language on human rights amended in 2010, is today’s current code. She currently serves as Chair of the Ethics Code Task Force for the American Public Health Association and Director of the NIDA funded Fordham University HIV and Drug Abuse Prevention Research Ethics Institute.  She has served as Chair of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Human Subjects Research Board, the New York State Board for Licensure in Psychology, the National Task Force on Applied Developmental Science, and the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Committee for Ethical Conduct in Child Development Research and the SRCD Common Rule Task Force. Dr. Fisher was also a member of the APA Ethics Committee, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Data Safety and Monitoring Board, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Clinical Research Involving Children, the IOM Committee on Ethical Review and Oversight Issues in Research Involving Standard of Care Interventions, the National Academies’ Committee on Revisions to the Common Rule for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), for which she co-chaired the SACHRP Subcommittee on Research Involving Children, and she is currently a member of the NIH Societal and Ethical Issues in Research Study Section. She also served as the founding director of the Fordham University Doctoral Program in Applied Developmental Psychology and cofounding editor of the journal Applied Developmental Science. She is the recipient of the 2010 Award for Excellence in Human Research Protection Life Time Achievement Award and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Fisher has written commissioned papers on research ethics with mentally impaired and vulnerable populations for President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission, for NIMH on points for consideration in the ethical conduct of suicide research and research involving children and adolescents, and for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) on HIV education, treatment, and referrals for research participants. She co-chaired the national conference on Research Ethics for Mental Health Science Involving Ethnic Minority Children and Youth (American Psychologist, December 2002) co-sponsored by the APA and NIMH, and the first National Conference on Graduate Education in Applied Developmental Science (Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1993).

Dr. Fisher has coedited eight books and authored more than 150 scholarly chapters and empirical articles on cognitive and social development across the life span and on research and professional ethics with special emphasis on the rights of racial/ethnic minorities, sexual and gender minority youth, children and adults with impaired decision making, and socially marginalized populations. With support from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), she has studied how to assess and enhance the abilities of adults with developmental disabilities to consent to research and is currently working on a project to develop research ethics training modules for American Indian and Native Alaskan community engaged researchers. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she has developed research ethics instructional materials for undergraduates, graduate students, senior scientists, and institutional review boards. She has developed assessment instruments to evaluate how teenagers and parents from different racial/ethnic backgrounds prepare for and react to racial discrimination, examined the validity of child abuse assessment techniques in institutional and forensic settings, and, with support from the NSF, NIDA, and the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), has partnered with culturally diverse community members and frontline researchers conducting community-based research to understand their perspectives on the ethics of adolescent risk research and research involving adults involved in street drug use and related HIV risk. With support from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the Office of Research Integrity, she has developed and validated measures assessing mentoring behaviors and departmental climates nurturing the responsible conduct of research in psychology graduate programs. Her research on intervention programs to reduce college students’ drinking behaviors has been supported by the Department of Education and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). She is also co-principle investigator on a National Institute for Minority Health Disparities grant on ethical issues in HIV research involving LGBT youth.