Percepción de los estudiantes de la Facultad de Psicología de la Universidad de Cuenca sobre los principios éticos de la Asociación Americana de Psicología durante las prácticas preprofesionales en el periodo marzo-agosto 2022

Abstract

Ecuador suffers from a lack of deontological codes that legally regulate the psychologist`s ethical practice. Moreover, the scarce investigation in the local context does not provide information about the application of ethical principles during the development of the professional career. Therefore, this work focused on describing the perception of Psychology students, from the University of Cuenca, about the ethical principles of the American Psychological Association during the internships of march-august 2022. The investigation was phenomenological with a qualitative approach and it was done with 8 students, who were given a semi-structured interview. The results about the perception of principle ethics are showed as a guide to act in an objective, neutral an legal manner; nevertheless, participants reflected about the contextualization of APA principles. About the use of ethical principles from APA, students said that they have applied them during their internship. In conclusion, students from the four degrees of Psychology identified ethical principles from APA, but they lacked depth on their conceptualizations; the contributions from every student showed they take the APA code as a base to act when there is a dilemma; nevertheless, social psychology students chose their personal criteria, because they think these principles are not suitable for working with communities.