Psychology
Research Methods
Research methods in psychology refer to the systematic approaches used to investigate and understand human behavior and mental processes. These methods include experimental, correlational, and observational techniques, as well as qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Researchers use these methods to gather empirical evidence, test hypotheses, and draw conclusions about psychological phenomena.
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
Related key terms
1 of 5
12 Key excerpts on "Research Methods"
eBook - PDF- Douglas Bernstein, , , (Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Throughout this book, you will see that research in psychology has created a large body of knowledge that is being put to good use in many ways. Let’s now look at the scientific methods that psychologists use in their research and at some of the pitfalls that lie in their path. Research Methods IN PSYCHOLOGY How do psychologists learn about people? Like other scientists, psychologists try to achieve four main goals in their research: to describe a phenomenon, to make predictions about it, and to introduce enough control in their research to allow them to explain the phenomenon with some degree of confidence. Five Research Methods have proven especially useful for gathering the evidence needed to reach each of these goals. They include observational methods, case studies, surveys, correla-tional studies, and experiments. Observational Methods: Watching Behavior Sometimes, the best way to describe behavior is through observational methods , such as naturalistic observation , the process of watching without interfering as behavior occurs in the natural environment (Hoyle, Harris, & Judd, 2002). This method is especially valuable when more noticeable methods might alter the behavior you want to study. For example, if you ask people to keep track of how often they exercise, they might begin to exercise more than usual, so their reports might give a false impression of their typical behavior. Much of what we know about, say, gender differences in how children play and commu-nicate with one another has come from psychologists’ observations in classrooms and playgrounds. Observations of adults, too, have provided valuable insights into friendships, couple communication patterns, and even responses to terrorism (e.g., Mehl & Pennebaker, 2003a, 2003b).
eBook - ePub- Ann L. Weber, Joseph Johnson(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Collins Reference(Publisher)
CHAPTER 2 Research Methods in Psychology T his chapter presents an overview of the basic methods of research that characterize psychology. It begins with an introduction to the scientific method that guides research in many disciplines. It also introduces key statistical concepts that are used to assess research findings, as well as a discussion of research ethics. As a science, psychology depends on a variety of Research Methods for its accumulated knowledge. To appreciate the findings of psychology, to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, it is necessary to understand these methods. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD The scientific method is not unique to psychology, but describes a process or cycle that characterizes “good science.” In fact, this method dates back to the work of Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), although these days, it has changed somewhat. By systematically adhering to the scientific method, research on a particular topic is guided by a process of self-correcting theory development, testing, and improvement. Theory Development The scientific method is concerned with theory development, testing, and refinement. A theory is a set of integrated principles and assumptions that organizes data, explains behaviors, and makes testable predictions. Unfortunately, the term “theory” in common usage has taken on a more imprecise meaning that often refers to a guess or hunch. In science, theories are not just educated guesses of what will happen, but systematic formalizations of how and/or why things happen. A conjecture about who committed a crime or what will happen when you microwave some random object, is not a theory. However, a coherent system for explaining differences and relationships between living organisms from today and millions of years ago (for example, evolution) is an established theory
eBook - PDFPsychology
Six Perspectives
- Dodge Fernald(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
22 2 Research Methods The Research Challenge Basic Research Approaches The Problem of Definitions Research and Common Sense Experimental Methods The Classical Experiment Variations in Designs Descriptive Methods Naturalistic Observation The Case Study Survey Methods Analysis of the Data Quantitative Analyses Qualitative Analyses M odern psychology emerges from its research. Without formal Research Methods, psychology would become mere speculation and common sense about human behavior, based on personal experience. In a large measure, Research Methods —— 23 the various perspectives in psychology arise from these methods. But which data are obtained? By what methods? How are they analyzed? Answers to these questions shape every perspective. In fact, a major challenge for each perspec-tive, and for psychology in general, is to bring about improvements in Research Methods. This chapter begins with the challenge of collecting data, emphasizing the problem of precision in measurement. Then it turns to the basic Research Methods, experimental and descriptive. The task of analyzing the data con-cludes this discussion. The Research Challenge In any research, the goal is to obtain findings that are reliable, valid, and also substantial. A finding that is stable and dependable shows reliability . It reappears consistently with repetition of the same research procedures. In other words, the result is predictable. A finding with high validity measures what it purports to measure. It is justified and well-founded. If it claims to show age differences in risk-taking behavior among male human beings, for example, it does indeed reveal a measurable, significant difference between young and old men engaging in unnecessarily hazardous activities. Of these qualities, validity is the most important. A valid measure includes high reliability, assessing accurately and therefore reliably whatever it is intended to measure.
eBook - PDF- Martin Dempster, Donncha Hanna(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
16 Part I: Getting Started with Research Methods or an oral presentation. Chapter 14 guides you through the process to help you prepare the perfect poster or presentation. Reports, posters and presentations share similar information, but they tend to do it in different ways – so you need to be aware of the discrepancies. Whichever format you present your research in, it must be appropriate and consistent with universal psychological standards. Chapter 15 discusses the American Psychological Association (APA) standards, outlines tips on how to report numbers and, importantly, gives you guidelines for correct referenc-ing procedures. Failure to reference correctly means you can be accused of plagiarism – which is a serious academic offence! Find out what plagiarism is and how to avoid inadvertently committing plagiarism in Chapter 15. Exploring Research Methods Research Methods are the methods you use to collect data for your research study. You won’t find a ‘right’ or ‘correct’ research method for your study. Each method has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Some methods are more suitable for investigating specific hypotheses or research questions – and any method can be performed poorly. For example, if you want to find out about the experience of living with bone cancer, an interview may be more suit-able than a questionnaire; however, a well-designed and validated questionnaire is far better than a poorly planned and badly executed interview. The following sections consider some potential data-collection methods that you may consider for your research study. Questionnaires and psychometric tests Most of the things psychologists are interested in are hard to measure. If you want to measure someone’s height or weight, however, it’s relatively straightforward. When you can directly measure something, it’s known as an observed variable (or sometimes a manifest variable) – like height or weight.
eBook - PDFPsychology
Selected Papers
- Gina Rossi(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- IntechOpen(Publisher)
Section 5 Qualitative Psychology 10 Qualitative Research Methods in Psychology Deborah Biggerstaff Warwick Medical School University of Warwick, Coventry UK 1. Introduction In the scientific community, and particularly in psychology and health, there has been an active and ongoing debate on the relative merits of adopting either quantitative or qualitative methods, especially when researching into human behaviour (Bowling, 2009; Oakley, 2000; Smith, 1995a, 1995b; Smith, 1998). In part, this debate formed a component of the development in the 1970s of our thinking about science. Andrew Pickering has described this movement as the “sociology of scientific knowledge” (SSK), where our scientific understanding, developing scientific ‘products’ and ‘know-how’, became identified as forming components in a wider engagement with society’s environmental and social context (Pickering, 1992, pp. 1). Since that time, the debate has continued so that today there is an increasing acceptance of the use of qualitative methods in the social sciences (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Morse, 1994; Punch, 2011; Robson, 2011) and health sciences (Bowling, 2009; Greenhalgh & Hurwitz, 1998; Murphy & Dingwall, 1998). The utility of qualitative methods has also been recognised in psychology. As Nollaig Frost (2011) observes, authors such as Carla Willig and Wendy Stainton Rogers consider qualitative psychology is much more accepted today and that it has moved from “the margins to the mainstream in psychology in the UK.” (Willig & Stainton Rogers, 2008, pp. 8). Nevertheless, in psychology, qualitative methodologies are still considered to be relatively ‘new’ (Banister, Bunn, Burman, et al., 2011; Hayes, 1998; Richardson, 1996) despite clear evidence to the contrary (see, for example, the discussion on this point by Rapport et al., 2005).
eBook - PDF- Siri Carpenter, Karen Huffman(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Applied research has de-signed programs for conflict resolution and counseling for perpetrators and victims of violence. Basic and applied research frequently interact, with one building on the other. For example, after basic re-search documented a strong relationship between alcohol consumption and increased aggression, applied research led some sports stadium owners to limit or ban complete-ly the sale of alcohol, and prohibit fans from bringing any liquid containers into the venue during the final quarter of football games and the last two innings of baseball games. The Scientific Method Like scientists in any other field, psychologists follow strict, standardized procedures so that others can understand, interpret, and repeat or test their findings. Most scientific investigations involve six basic steps ( Figure 1.5 ). The Science of Psychology LEARNING OBJECTIVES RETRIEVAL PRACTICE While reading the upcoming sections, respond to each Learning Objective in your own words. Then compare your responses with those in Appendix B. 1. Compare the fundamental goals of basic and applied research. 2. Describe the scientific method. 3. Identify how psychologists protect the rights of human and nonhuman research participants and psychotherapy clients. I basic research Research conducted to advance scientific knowledge rather than for practical application. applied research Research designed to solve practical problems. PROCESS DIAGRAM The scientific method • Figure 1.5 Scientific knowledge is constantly evolving and self-correcting through application of the scientific method. As soon as one research study is published, the cycle begins again. Data are collected and statistical analyses are performed to determine whether or not the findings are statistically significant , and if the original hypothesis should be supported or rejected. Statistics play a vital role in the scientific method (see Appendix A).
- Aparna Raghvan(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Society Publishing(Publisher)
3. Pretesting Survey Items: Covers expert review, cognitive interviews, focus groups, and field testing. 4. Sampling: It mainly includes random sampling, sampling frames, census, stratification, and other considerations. 5. Administering the Survey: It comprises online surveys, personal interviews, and mailed surveys. 6. Calculating Response Rates: It includes maximizing response rates, calculating response rates, and measuring non-response bias. Survey Methods in Research and Evaluation of Education ... 195 7. Setting up a Focus Groups (as an alternative to a survey or to complement a survey project): It covers the primary objective of focus groups, selecting focus group members, preparing protocols, moderator strategies, collection as well as analysis of data. 8.4. 6 KEY METHODS OF EDUCATION PSYCHOLOGY There are basically six important methods of education psychology. The methods are: 1. Introspection; 2. The observational method; 3. The experimental method; 4. The clinical method; 5. The genetic or developmental method; 6. The testing methods. Psychology is defined as the systematic and scientific study of human behavior. It comprises its own special tools and procedures. These tools and procedures play a very important role in analyzing, organizing, and gathering its subject-matter or the essential facts about it. These procedures are called its methods, which we will discuss in this section.These methods have to be scientific, systematic, and consistent if the knowledge that one obtains from these is used for scientific purposes. Educational psychology uses all these principal methods of psychology. Apart from these methods, there are some other essential methods that are used by educational psychologists in the collection and organization of necessary data. 8.4.1. Introspection The Introspection method is one of the older methods and is peculiar to psychology.
- Lorelle J. Burton, Drew Westen, Robin M. Kowalski(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Taking a qualitative research approach enables researchers to study phenom- ena in their natural settings and uncover a deeper meaning of phenomena. Pdf_Folio:226 226 Psychology SUMMARY 5.1 Describe the characteristics of quantitative Research Methods in psychology. • Psychologists might engage in quantitative research (e.g., exper- iments or surveys that provide data that can be quantified) or qual- itative research (e.g., interviews, observation and case studies to gain a richer understanding of the relevant phenomena), depending on the nature of their research question. • Empirical or scientific psychological research is characterised by a theoretical framework, standardised procedures, generalisability and objective measurement. • A theory is a systematic way of organising and explaining obser- vations that includes a set of propositions about the relationships among various phenomena. A hypothesis is a tentative belief or educated guess that purports to predict or explain the relationship between two or more variables; variables are phenomena that differ or change across circumstances or individuals. A variable that can be placed on a continuum is a continuous variable. A variable comprised of groupings or categories is a categorical variable. • A sample is a subgroup of a population that is likely to be representative of the population as a whole. Generalisability refers to the applicability of findings based on a sample to the entire population of interest. For a study’s findings to be generalisable, its methods must be sound, or valid. • A measure is a concrete way of assessing a variable. A good measure is both reliable and valid. Reliability refers to a measure’s ability to produce consistent results. The validity of a measure refers to its ability to assess the construct it is intended to measure. • The scientific approach uses empirical methodologies such as observation and experimentation to gain knowledge.
eBook - ePub- Matt Jarvis(Author)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
10 Research Methods in sport psychology
By the end of this chapter, you should able to:Learning objectives- understand the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research
- describe the experimental method and discuss its use in sport psychology research
- describe the correlational method and discuss its use in sport psychology
- describe survey methods, including questionnaires, interviews and focus groups, and discuss their use in sport psychology
- outline the case study method and discuss its use in sport psychology
- discuss the use of archived data in sport psychology research
- critically discuss the usefulness of systematic review and meta-analysis as ways of drawing conclusions from multiple studies.
This chapter is devoted to understanding the sort of research conducted in sport psychology. There are two purposes of this. First, it should give you a slightly deeper understanding of the research you will come across in this and other books whilst studying sport psychology. For example, you might wish to understand better why a study was done the way it was, or what the strengths and limitations are of the different Research Methods. Second, it should help you begin to plan your own research. There is no attempt to include everything you might ever want to know about carrying out research; that would be a book in itself, and there are several good books of that sort. However, it should give you a sound background in some basic principles.Quantitative and qualitative research
Hayes (2000) defines quantitative methods as those ‘which involve the manipulation of numerical data’ (p 239). In other words, the researchers are dealing with information in the form of numbers. Qualitative approaches, on the other hand, attempt to draw out the meanings
eBook - ePubEssentials of Clinical Psychology
An Indian Perspective
- S. K. Mangal, Shubhra Mangal(Authors)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
In the use of the method of meta-analysis, researchers try to have an appropriate statistical analysis of the results of independent research studies for arriving at a single conclusion helpful in answering a specific research question. For realizing its mission in a proper way, researchers are advised to make use of the systematic steps named as (i) Formulating the research question and establish the testable hypotheses, (ii) Obtaining a representative study sample in the form of selecting studies for being meta-analyzed, (iii) Extracting summary data or outcomes/findings from each study selected for meta-analysis, (iv) Doing analysis work, and (v) Deriving conclusions.Ethical Issues in Clinical Psychology Research
It is hoped as well as expected from researchers in all fields of knowledge to be sufficiently ethical in their research pursuit by following all the norms and values as needed on their part in this concern. Such need and expectations are more intensified in the cases of researchers carrying out investigation or research work in clinical psychology, where human behavior under distress is the focus and human beings are the subjects of the research study. In general, in this concern, the researchers in clinical psychology are required to pay attention to the ethical issues like:
eBook - PDFChild Psychology
A Canadian Perspective
- Alastair Younger, Scott A. Adler, Ross Vasta(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
In the same way, psychologists have long debated the capabilities of the newborn. Only since the 1960s, however, have research techniques been developed that permit the scientific study of many re- lated questions. Another reason for including this chapter is that the remainder of the text presents a good deal of research evidence regarding developmental progress and processes. This evidence, for the most part, has been gathered through the methods described here, so it is helpful to approach it with an understanding of the differences between the correlational and experimental designs, longitudinal and cross-sectional experiments, and so on. These basics will also pave the way for the many more specific techniques and procedures used in various areas, which we describe as they come into play. SUMMARY KEY TERMS case study, p. 46 cohort effect, p. 54 comparative research, p. 58 correlation, p. 47 correlation coefficient (r), p. 47 cross-cultural studies, p. 57 cross-sectional design, p. 54 cross-sequential design, p. 55 cultural psychology, p. 58 dependent variable, p. 49 descriptive research, p. 44 ethnographic methods, p. 58 hypothesis, p. 42 independent variable, p. 49 interview method, p. 45 law (principle), p. 42 longitudinal design, p. 52 microgenetic method, p. 56 naturalistic observation, p. 44 negative correlation, p. 47 objectivity, p. 42 observer influences, p. 45 positive correlation, p. 47 quasi-experimental studies, p. 50 scatter diagram, p. 47 scientific method, p. 42 structured observation, p. 45 theory, p. 42 variable, p. 46 LEARNING OBJECTIVES LEARNING OBJECTIVE 2.1 Understand how researchers use the scientific method to study child development. 1. What is the scientific method? The scientific method consists of the rules that researchers use to conduct and describe their investigations. 2. What two roles do theories play in the research process? Theories help organize the information gathered from scientific studies.
eBook - ePub- Graham C. Davey(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
- Enormous progress has been made in brain imaging techniques in recent years. Neuroscientists use data from techniques such as fMRI, EEG, and MEG to make inferences about cognitive, socio-cognitive, and emotional functioning.
- Opinions are mixed about the extent to which these techniques have provided genuine new insights into psychological functioning.
- Traditional behavioural measures retain many advantages: they are cheap and easy to use, and can be used with large numbers of participants.
- Ambulatory assessment makes use of portable event-recording devices (nowadays smartphones and iPads) to obtain data about behaviour in real time rather than retrospectively. Applications include measuring pain, stress, anxiety, mood, cigarette use, social phobia episodes, and dieting behaviour (to name just a few!).
- For decades, null hypothesis significance testing has been the dominant quantitative approach in psychology. Although it remains popular, it is gradually being supplanted by alternative approaches, such as Bayesian statistical methods. There is also a shift in emphasis from how likely results are to how sizeable and replicable they are.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
We are living in an exciting era, as far as Research Methods in psychology are concerned. There seem to be challenges to the current approach to studying behaviour, which for decades has been dominated mainly by experimental studies in conjunction with quantitative statistical analyses using the NHST model. It remains to be seen whether there will be a paradigm shift in dealing with psychological data, comparable to the change from introspection to behaviourism, or from behaviourism to cognitive approaches.Whatever happens, the current diversity of methodologies being used to study human behaviour scientifically can only be a good thing, with both quantitative and qualitative approaches having something worthwhile to offer. There is also currently a healthy concern with how replicable and generalizable current psychological findings are. Again, this is something that can only be to the good of the discipline as a whole.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
