The methodological Hawthorne effect, generally denned as the problem in field experiments that subjects' knowledge that they are in an experiment modifies their behavior from what it would have been without the knowledge, originated out of the classic studies at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company. Closer examination reveals that although it is a phenomenon that should be of considerable concern to researchers, the Hawthorne effect is poorly understood and, with the passage of time, has taken on several different, yet still quite imprecise meanings. The nature of the artifact is inconsistently described in contemporary psychology textbooks, and there is a lack of agreement on how the effect is mediated. A review of controls for Hawthorne effects in current field research, mostly in education, revealed that the controls took several forms, each designed for different purposes. Studies intended to produce Hawthorne effects suggested that the commonly held notion of the artifact that has evolved is not the problem that plagued the Hawthorne researchers. A remterpretation reveals a different methodological concern that resembles more recent research on the social psychology of the psychological experiment and a need to adopt different methodological control procedures than those normally used to counter the "Hawthorne effect."

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Research documenting the impact on experimental results of ethical procedures such as informed consent, freedom to withdraw, and constraints upon the use of deception was reviewed, and the frequency of these practices was surveyed in published research. The proportion of studies that reported obtaining informed consent or explicitly giving subjects the freedom to withdraw was negligible, and the practice of deception has not been reduced by ethical regulations. The percentage of social psychological studies that employed deception increased monotonically over the past three decades. Although recent data show a slight decline, the extremity of some deceptions does not seem to have moderated. Reports of debriefing subjects have generally increased," however, most investigators still do not report this practice, and few describe what subjects are told. Considering the demonstrated methodological consequences of ethical procedures, detailed reporting of these practices should be required and expected in all published research.

The development of an indigenous psychology has generally been documented by examples of indigenous constructs and conceptual analyses of their emergence. In contrast, the present article proposes an empirical approach. Indigenization is conceived as a gradual process that may be operationalized, and measured by content analysis of journal articles as the discipline develops and changes. Measures are proposed to assess the extent to which the concepts, problems, hypotheses, methods, and tests: (a) emanate from, (b) adequately represent, and (c) reflect back upon, the cultural context in which behaviour is observed. Application of these to 355 empirical and 31 theoretical articles from Indian journals and 39 foreign empirical articles published by Indian psychologists, indicates some slight movement toward an indigenous discipline, and some interesting relationships that assist in understanding its development. Factors contributing to indigenization and the utility of the empirical approach are discussed.

Psychology claims to be an international discipline. This claim has been based upon subjective estimates of attendance at international congresses, status reports from selected countries published within edited volumes, and a survey of the member countries of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) (Rosenzweig, 1992). However, to be truly international, the work of psychologists in countries around the world must be internationally disseminated. Systematic examination of international congress presentations and abstracts of published psychological literature indexed on widely available electronic databases (e.g., PsycLIT) provides a more objective means of documenting the international presence of psychology. In this article, counts by country were made of research contributions reported within PsycLIT and on the programs of International Congresses of Applied Psychology over the five years in which the congresses were held from 1982 to 1998. Analyses of these data revealed PsycLIT to be more international in scope than previously assumed—45% of its entries were by authors from outside the US. Coverage of research from developing countries was even more limited within PsycLIT (4.67%), but proportionally greater within international congresses (10%). PsycLIT entries not in the English language were found noticeably to have declined from approximately 12–14% levels in the 1980s to only about 6% in the 1990s. An index of the presence of psychology in each country, based upon presentations at IAAP congresses, memberships in international associations, and the extent of PsycLIT entries over the previous three decades, provided an objective, empirically‐based answer to the question ‘How International is Psychology?' This index indicated that psychology has a significant presence in 47 countries, a presence in another 22 countries, but minimal or no presence in 82 other countries. The meaning of these data for the discipline and ways in which psychology's worldwide presence might be strengthened and extended were discussed.