‘Ethics is more than just a process’

With her menagerie of rehomed rescue animals, including a former racehorse and several fish liberated from a fair, and charity equine photography work, it is obvious that Dr Roz Collings leads her life in a values-driven way. Collings, who has taught ethics and statistics for around 20 years, has recently taken up the helm of the British Psychological Society's Ethics Committee, Ella Rhodes spoke to her about her passion for the topic. 

Dr Roz Collings tells me: 'I always describe myself as a values-driven person. I have values of integrity, impact and inclusivity – and that's in my personal life as well. All my animals are rehomed rescue animals and I use ethical methods to train all my animals. I'm not perfect, and I may not always get it right, but I am always learning.'

Also the Editor for Research into Higher Education Abstracts, Collings is currently Principal Lecturer and Head of Psychology (Curriculum) at the University of Wolverhampton. She was previously involved with setting up and chairing a psychology ethics committee and a faculty ethics committee at her previous university, and has worked as a layperson on the Council for Psychotherapists' Ethics Committee.

I often describe myself as being seen by others as the devil at the gate. People think to get on with my research project I've got to get past that devil at the gate.

Collings said her passion for teaching ethics comes from the way the subject opens interesting debates among students. Some of her lectures explore what an ethical undergraduate research project would look like, where she asks her students to act as a mock ethics committee. 'For example, I may ask them to consider why I would approve one project but not the other when they both want to study the same thing that could be classed as a little risky. It all boils down to the fact that one may have the competency level and been working with individuals who have similar experiences as the participant pool for many years.'

One of the main aims of her career, Collings said, was to show individuals that ethics was more than a process or tick-box exercise. 'I often describe myself as being seen by others as the devil at the gate. People think to get on with my research project I've got to get past that devil at the gate, which is the ethics application, and it shouldn't be viewed that way.'

Having been a member of the British Psychological Society since 1999, Collings said she applied for the role of chair of the Ethics Committee as she wanted to become more involved with the Society's work. 'I've got 20 years' experience of teaching ethics, and I remain passionate about everything ethics… that was my main motivation for applying.' One of her first activities will be a survey of psychology courses to assess how many are following standardised accreditation criteria for ethics reviews for dissertation. 'This wouldn't be about putting departments on a naughty list, but it's about providing help and support.'

Collings said she also hopes to open conversations, and increase enthusiasm for ethics, within psychology and beyond. 'I am the odd ball of the family, the first to go to university, while my brothers followed more business pursuits. But my brother rang me recently and told me he'd become interested in Kant's ethics and we started talking about it and I realised that that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to spread that enthusiasm and passion and conversation within psychology and beyond to the public and show that ethics is more than just a process.' 

She has also joined the BPS Challenging Histories Group which brings together staff from the Society's Knowledge and Insight team, members of the Ethics Committee, a psychiatrist, and experts in medical history and medical humanities. The group undertakes historical analysis of psychology for input into policy, explores historical cases of unethical conduct in UK psychology, and organises outreach events exploring psychology's troubling past in areas including eugenics.

Collings said in her role in this group she hoped to take a 'challenging futures' point of view. 'We need to learn lessons from our past. There's no point simply reviewing history – what are we learning from this history and how can we move that forward? This links in with the big push towards open science, pre-registration of reports, and the ethical implications that come with fishing around for significant results etc.'

There's a lot of uncertainty about the future in Britain and I have concerns about the impact this is having on the younger generation coming through.

More generally Collings said there are three broad areas of ethics which she wants to focus on during her time as chair – the ethics of research practice and professional practice, and the ethical academy. 'We know in higher education that academic misconduct is rife at the moment. But it's not just about the students' ethical academy we need to consider the academics' ethical academy too, which links into how you're analysing your data, how you're reporting your data and whether you're presenting the correct information to the general public.'

Looking to the future, I asked Collings about some of the ethical debates we're likely to hear more about over the coming years. 'When the Queen died, I was worried about the unsettling of Great Britain… we are still dealing with Covid, all of the economic crises that are being faced, and the impact of the war in Ukraine. There's a lot of uncertainty about the future in Britain and I have concerns about the impact that all this is having on the younger generation coming through. From a practitioner point of view, I think there's going to be ethical considerations around the lack of services that are available, the push for quick fixes and possible lack of evaluations. Inequality is going to grow quite substantially and there are ethical issues that come along with that inequality divide.'

Collings also sees interesting ethical questions arriving in terms of curriculum design. 'We want to remain up-to-date, we want to teach what is going on in the world in an ethical and sensitive way but we do have to teach these things.' Digital issues, Collings added, would also doubtless lead to ethical questions being raised – on the efficacy of online therapy, the ethics of online research and payments or incentives to take part in research as well as the validity of results gathered from online vs face to face.

'Publicly I can see the development of an ethical debate between the freedom of speech versus inaccurate information coming out. Take responses to the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial for example. Some recent research found that individuals who focused only on the newspapers and didn't watch the trial believed Amber Heard, but those individuals who watched the trial in part or full were happy with the result. It's about creating a public who are resilient and critical thinking enough to be able to decide what's misinformation and what's fact.'

While Collings is a values-driven person, she told me she was a little shocked at being featured in The Psychologist. 'I'm not after accolades. I've always been about supporting others – my PhD was on peer mentoring. I don't want to be a prof, I don't need that, but I will support others to become profs! That links with why I'm so interested in ethics and justice. As an individual with disabilities who owns and has trained assistance dogs, I hope I am seen as an advocate for people, and I like to be a role model as well.'