This study examined three perspectives on ethical dimensions of South African professional
psychology. These perspectives were derived from three data sets. The first data set comprised a
series of public complaints against psychologists; the second a series of ethical dilemmas reported
by psychologists themselves, and the third comprised a study of the training of South African
psychologists in professional ethics.
Clear patterns emerged in the analysis of each data set, and efforts were made to integrate the
findings. Psychologists in particular registration categories, trained at particular universities and
working in particular practice contexts were disproportionately more likely to attract complaints.
Similarly, patterns of dilemmas experienced by psychologists also emerged. Comparison of
complaints with dilemmas suggested that there were significant differences and some similarities
in the ethical issues and contexts associated with public complaints and psychologists' own ethical
dilemmas. The study of ethics training suggested general dissatisfaction with the relevance and
quantity of ethics training nationally.
The main findings were integrated to make recommendations for improving the ethics training of
South African psychologists. The limitations of the data are described, along with suggestions for
future research to examine in greater depth and specificity several dominant patterns described by
the present study. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/10564 |
| Date | 04 April 2014 |
| Creators | Wassenaar, Douglas Richard. |
| Contributors | Lindegger, Graham Charles. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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