Research Methods for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

Bart L. Weathington, Christopher J. L. Cunningham, David J. Pittenger

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780470458037
• eBook ISBN: 9781119470076
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

A comprehensive introduction to research methods and best practices for designing,conducting, interpreting, and reporting findings

This text is designed to develop in students a passion for conducting research and an understanding of the practical value of systematic information- gathering and decision-making. It features step-by-step coverage of the research process including research design, statistical considerations, and guidance on writing up and presenting results.

Recognized leaders in the field—authors Bart Weathington, Christopher Cunningham, and David Pittenger—present:

• Introductions to multiple research designs—including single-participant, multi-group, longitudinal, correlational, and experimental designs—accompanied by examples

• Bibliographic research and methods for appropriate sampling

• Identifying, developing, and evaluating reliable and valid approaches to measurement

• The issues and steps common to all single-factor and multifactor studies, as well as single-subject and nonexperimental methods

• How to summarize research in writing that conforms to the editorial guidelines of the American Psychological Association

A comprehensive review of research methods and the statistical concepts that support them, Research Methods for the Behavioral and Social Sciences offers the best techniques for studying behavior and social phenomena.

Part I
Overview of the Research Process

Chapter 1
Research and the Social Sciences

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

1. Introduction
2. Why Is Understanding Research Methods So Important?
3. The Role of Science in Everyday Life
4. The Scientific Method
5. Brief History of the Science of Behavior
6. Bacon’s Legacy
7. Other Important Historical Figures
8. Assumptions of Science
9. Requirements for Scientific Research
10. Research in Action: The Case of Facilitated Communication

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

—Albert Einstein

Introduction

Welcome to one of the most critical courses in the curriculum for any degree. A basic understanding of research is especially important in the social sciences. Understanding something as complex as social interactions or human behaviors and cognitions is not easy. Without an empirical, scientific approach to the development of a body of knowledge, our understanding of people will be incomplete and rife with error. Having a solid understanding and appreciation of research methods will help you to fully connect with the field you are preparing yourself for at this very moment. Each of us, your authors, is passionate about research for very different reasons. The three of us are psychologists, but our interests and research overlap with many other areas. As you read this text, an understanding of who we are and where we came from may help you to better place the techniques and concepts related to research methods in context with your own career goals. So you can have some idea of where we are coming from in future chapters, here are brief bios for you to consider:

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Bart Weathington

I became an academic and “researcher” in a non-traditional way. Growing up I was always fascinated by science (due in part to some very good teachers along the way). I was also very interested in understanding why people behave the way they do. My dad spent most of his career as an industrial engineer helping to streamline processes and improve industrial efficiency. I knew very early that engineering was not for me, but discussions with my dad about what he did for a living instilled in me an understanding that the most important component of any project is the people involved. I went through seven majors in college before figuring out that psychology was, for me, the best combination of my interests. I lucked into a course on psychology applied to business in my junior year and from that time on I knew that was what I wanted to do. However, I was much more interested in applying knowledge than in creating it.

I went to graduate school with the intention of becoming a consultant upon graduation. I wanted to help organizations solve real-world problems and help individuals maximize their potential. Little did I know that the best way I would find to do this would be to combine teaching, consulting, and research. I discovered that the best way to apply knowledge is to have an understanding of how it was learned in the first place. Understanding research methods is the key to this process. I began my career as a consultant who did a little teaching and research on the side. Now I am a teacher and researcher who consults a little on the side. It is my firm belief (and I hope you will take the same understanding away from this text) that understanding how knowledge is identified, created, and refined (i.e., research methods) will help you make better decisions in the future—whether you become a researcher yourself or if you never conduct your own research study outside of a classroom setting. Being an informed consumer of research is as important as being an informed researcher.

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Chris Cunningham

Psychology is in my family, but that’s not why I became an Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychologist. My dad was (and still is) an extremely busy child-and-school psychologist, and my mom is a professor of education at a local college. Thinking about thinking and behavior was probably our favorite pastime and also the source of many dinner-table discussions. This didn’t translate into career goals until the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. That summer I lived by Lake Champlain in northern Vermont working as a temporary employee in a variety of roles (think ticket sales and light construction). The work was boring and tedious and I spent a lot of time thinking seriously about what kind of work would actually interest and motivate me for the long haul. Ultimately I decided to major in psychology, but this merely left me with the inevitable question, “Now what do I do?” Over the next two summers, I worked as a child-care counselor and psychiatric intern at a residential treatment facility and hospital in Pennsylvania. Although extremely important, this type of work was not personally rewarding. Pouring my heart and soul into providing therapy and assistance to patients, watching them “finish” treatment, and then watching them be readmitted weeks later in worse shape than before really bothered me.

I began to wonder whether there was another way for me to have a positive impact on peoples’ lives without working in a clinical setting. Remembering my temporary worker experiences and other jobs I had held, I decided to prepare myself for graduate school in Industrial-Organizational psychology. I wanted to figure out a way to improve people’s lives through their work environments. To move toward this goal, I began to focus heavily in graduate school on occupational health and safety issues. The one constant through all of this was my passionate desire to understand something and make things better. These interests can be satisfied only with good research, and I learned the Skills and techniques for this from my psychology training as an undergraduate and graduate student. This drive to learn something new every day and share that with other people is what gets me out of bed every morning. Having an understanding and appreciation of proper research methods and statistical analyses has allowed me to respond to a wide variety of challenges in my academic and consulting work and I sincerely believe these skills form the core of any social science career.

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David Pittenger

I fell in love with psychology in high school when I took a general psychology course. When I entered college I decided to be a psychology major. More specifically, I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. I imagined that I would sit in my office, listen to clients tell me their problems, and then dispense helpful advice. All I needed to do was learn how to do therapy—or so I thought. During my first term at college, I took three courses: a freshman orientation seminar, an introduction to philosophy, and an introduction to psychology. From the first day, the psychology instructor emphasized that psychology is a science and that we would learn how psychologists use the scientific method to understand human behavior. What a shock! I had taken biology, chemistry, and physics in high school. These were sciences—how could anyone confuse psychology with a science? What really startled me was when the instructor told us about the major. After the introductory course, we would have to take a course in statistics and then another course in research methods. Then, in our senior year, we would have to conduct a scientific study related to psychology. Math was never my favorite subject, and I had planned to dodge college-level mathematics as artfully as I could. I began to doubt my decision to major in psychology. Was all this science stuff really for me? Was I in the right major? I wanted to help people. Why did I have to suffer through courses in statistics and research methods? Then something interesting happened. My philosophy course surveyed great ideas in western thought. During the middle of the semester, I realized that my philosophy instructor talked about the same topics as my psychology instructor. For example, in my philosophy course we read sections from Wittgenstein’s essay on the meaning of words. In the psychology course we learned how psychologists study children’s language development. I recognized then that psychologists study many of the same questions that have confronted the great thinkers throughout history.

When I began graduate school, I still wanted to be a clinical psychologist and hoped to learn how the science of psychology guided therapists to new and effective treatments. By then I was not surprised to learn that my coursework included statistics and research methods. Even the courses in clinical psychology emphasized how psychologists use research to determine the effectiveness of different therapies. When I finished my master’s degree, I worked in a residential psychiatric hospital as a counselor. I was a member of a treatment team and offered group and individual therapy under the direction of the ward’s psychiatrist. Although I enjoyed my job, I noticed that something was missing. How did we know that our therapy worked? Our clients got better; but did their improvement reflect our efforts, or did they just get better? Other questions nagged at me. Why, for example, do people continue to do something that they have agreed is self-destructive? Why was a specific treatment useful for one client but not another? When I shared my questions with a former professor, his response was, “David, you are asking questions like an experimental psychologist. You want to understand what causes behavior. Go back to graduate school and follow your interests.” I did. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Overview of the Research Process
• Part II: Nuts and Bolts of Research
• Part III: Common Research Designs
• Part IV: Special Research Designs
• Appendix A: Statistics Behind the Research or, “What Was I Supposed to Remember from My Statistics Class Anyway?”
• Appendix B: Statistical Tables
• Appendix C: Answers to Knowledge Check Questions
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• End User License Agreement