A couple of years ago, I got a question that totally floored me, because it made me realize how easy it is to get the wrong impression about research (and how important it is for researchers to explain their work as carefully as possible, to avoid misunderstandings). After I described how peer relations researchers use classroom- or grade-based sociometric assessments–peer nominations or ratings–to study peer status, a guy raised his hand and asked how kids handle being told that they’re rejected. He interpreted my explanation to mean that researchers go back into the schools to inform participants of their peer status. Yikes.

While I’ve only gotten that question once, I know better than to think that he’s the only person who has ever wondered that same thing.

So, for anyone who has ever wondered: No, we do not share individual research results with our participants. To do so would be not only terribly unethical and just plain mean in many cases, but it’s also a potential threat to the reliability of the data.

I think a lot of people assume we share our results with the kids because we’re psychologists–we’re supposed to be helping, right? And maybe “helping” involves letting kids know how their peers really see them, so that they can make decisions or changes based on that information. But in this case, that information would rarely be helpful, and would often be harmful. Thus, we don’t disclose individual results at all, unless we are concerned about the safety of a participant (and 1) this is rare, and 2) it’s a whole other post).

Many (most?) people don’t realize that the majority of psychologists don’t provide any kind of direct counseling or other services at all—thousands of us are academic psychologists, with careers aimed at understanding thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and brains. We do research. (And teach. Also another post.) Indirectly, we are helping, because we’re doing the research that leads to the development of therapeutic techniques, or prevention or intervention programs, or educational practices, or child welfare policy. But we leave the direct helping to our clinical and counseling psychology colleagues, who are specially trained to provide counseling services. And that’s the way you want it. You definitely don’t want me telling your child that 60% of his peers nominated him as “someone I like the least.” But you do want me studying your rejected child (or your popular child, or your average child, or your bullied child)—because it’s my research, and the research of my academic colleagues, that will ultimately teach us how to help children feel safe and happy at school. And that helps everyone.

FAQ #1: When you ask kids to answer questions about negative behaviors (like aggression), aren’t you giving them ideas about bad things they can do—things they never thought of before?

A: No, and here’s why. There’s a multi-level process involved in creating a study like this, and part of the work at each level involves making sure that the study isn’t going to give anybody any ideas. First, using our expert knowledge of child development, we make our questions age-appropriate. We typically don’t ask young children questions about sexual behaviors, for example. Second, all university-sponsored research studies are reviewed by a committee of faculty and other experts on campus (the Institutional Review Board) to screen for potential concerns. Third, we consult with experts in the field (parents, principals) to make sure that our research methods are a good fit for the kids we’re studying. For example, my students and I recently asked 5th- and 7th-graders to tell us about their acts of relational aggression. We gave them a list of behaviors, and they answered questions about the ones they had recently engaged in. The principal of the middle school felt comfortable with all of the behaviors in our survey, but the elementary school principal did not—at her request, we removed two or three items from the list. Her concern? That most of her 5th-graders had not heard of those particular methods of aggressing before, and that some children might be inspired to give them a try. We trusted her judgment, and she in turn felt more comfortable partnering with our lab for the study.

Many researchers conduct focus groups with children or adolescents before they design a study—to make sure that their surveys capture the typical experiences of their participants, and to prevent the inclusion of material that’s inappropriate.

Beyond all that, I’ve learned that I don’t have a whole lot to teach teenagers about bad behaviors.