Bowlby 44 thieves - Lecture notes 1 PDF

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Lecture notes on Bowlby's 44 thieves, from burnley campus, Amy's lecture...

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Amelia Hallsworth

“Discuss the ethical issues and social implications that arise from Bowlby’s (1944) research ‘Forty-four juvenile thieves: their characters and home-life.’ [12]

Bowlby’s research which was carried out in 1944 had many ethical issues and social implications attached to it. The ethical issues caused by John Bowlby’s research were confidentiality and privacy and valid consent. Confidentiality and privacy was an ethical issue because Bowlby publishes his report in 1946 and included the first name and initial letter of last name of each participant in the study. The case study also included a lot of personal and background information about the participant, the main fact being that they were a thief. The amount of information about participants in the case study made it very easy for somebody to research the case study and work out who the participants were. This could result in people learning a lot of information about the participants knowing or agreeing to it. Some of the participants may have preferred that their information wasn’t shared in a way that was easy for the public to work out who they were. It’s also an ethical issue because it isn’t made clear whether the participants or their families knew that this information was being collected. Valid consent was also an ethical issue; this is because it appears that the data was collected as part of routine meetings and check up’s at the clinic and therefore the participants and their families may not have known that the data was being collected and therefore probably didn’t consent to it. It’s also an issue because the report was published 5 years later in 1946 so it would have been difficult to gain consent from the participants or their families when it was published. The participants in the study may have changed in the time between the data collection and the report publication and they may not have wanted that information publishing about them five years later. The social implications associated with Bowlby’s research are maternity leave. The tradition has always been that after a child had been born their mother would have up to 6 months off work as maternity leave and the father would remain in work. The government then changed the rules so that a mother and father are entitled to share that six month period as they see fit. This is called Paternity leave. Paternity leave allows a mother and a father to have up to three months off work each after the birth of their child. This change shows that as a society we are moving away from the traditional views that a mother is the primary care-giver of an infant and it also allows the father to build a bind with their child rather than just a mother doing so....