Methods in Psychological Research. Annabel Ness Evans

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      Quantitative research always involves numbers that reflect the amount of behavior.Qualitative research often involves narrative descriptions of what behavior looks like. A tally of how many self-harm behaviors Susie exhibits in a day would be quantitative data. A description of the nature of those self-harm behaviors would be qualitative data.

      Basic Versus Applied Research

      The distinction between basic or pure research and applied research is best made by examining the motives of the researchers. In basic research, the researcher may have no application in mind but is interested in answering a question simply to satisfy his or her curiosity. In applied research, the researcher is looking at applying the knowledge to somehow benefit humankind.

      Basic or pure research may seem esoteric and may leave people scratching their heads, wondering why this type of research should be funded. Particularly in times of fiscal restraint, should governments be funding research that is only going to increase our understanding of something but has no application in daily life? The answer, of course, is yes! Applied research typically involves the application of basic principles discovered by basic researchers. Without basic research, there is nothing to apply; both are important.

      An example of applied research that is becoming more and more common is program evaluation. As the name implies, program evaluation involves the application of various research approaches to measure the effectiveness of a program. Not implied in the name is the importance of objective evaluation in the development of a program and its integration as an ongoing part of the program. This applied research is usually a requirement of any program supported by the government or developed by industry and is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 12.

      Cross-Sectional Versus Longitudinal Research

      Most research in psychology that looks at age differences is cross-sectional. A cross section of different ages is studied at one point in time. The goal is usually to understand developmental or maturational differences between the ages. A potential problem with this research is that there may be other variables that are confounded with age. This problem has been called the cohort effect because a cohort of same-aged individuals will share variables related to their history. Differences between age groups, then, are confounded with differences in history. Imagine that we asked 30-, 40-, and 70-year-olds about their attitudes about monogamy. If we found that 70-year-olds have much more liberal attitudes, could we conclude that this is a maturational effect? Probably not. People who are in their 70s today spent their formative years during the 1960s, a very sexually free time in our history.

      A solution is to study a single age cohort over a number of years. With longitudinal research, everyone has a similar history, but the research is going to take years! This raises problems of cost and the tracking of participants over time.

      Field Versus Laboratory Research

      The distinction between field and laboratory research highlights a difference of control. In the laboratory, researchers may have total control over most variables, whereas in the field, they may have difficulty controlling even a few. The control afforded by laboratory research makes it more likely that you will detect a treatment effect or a relationship between variables. But the artificiality of the laboratory may mean that your results do not generalize to the real world. On the other hand, there is nothing artificial about research in the field, but your lack of control of variables may mean that you do not obtain significant results. The decision to conduct research in the laboratory or in the field is a trade-off, then, among artificiality (high in the lab, low in the field), control over variables (high in the lab, low in the field), and generalizability (low in the lab, high in the field).

      We have discussed why researchers do what they do and the general approaches taken by researchers in the social sciences. Regardless of the approach that a researcher takes, the process of planning and conducting research follows a logical series of steps.

      Steps in Planning and Doing Research

      Most of you will be expected to conduct some sort of research project in your methods course. Here we will discuss how to start thinking about doing research.

      Selecting a Research Topic

      From Life Experience

      Very often, some life event inspires a researcher. Many years ago, one of your authors met a man who could not remember anything he had just learned. She had to introduce herself to him every time she met with him because he could not remember ever having met her before. She found this to be such an interesting phenomenon that she decided, when she began her graduate training, that she would focus on human memory.

      Have you noticed that people in elevators rarely make eye contact with you? Have you ever found yourself trapped on the phone by a telemarketer, unable to just hang up? These kinds of personal experiences are a great source of research ideas. As psychology students know, Pavlov did not set out to discover the basic laws of classical conditioning. He was not even interested in psychology. But he noticed something odd in the behavior of his dogs when doing research on digestion. This personal experience led him to begin investigation into an entirely new area.

      Conceptual Exercise 1C

      1 A researcher has participants rate their mood on a scale after viewing different color combinations. She wonders how color combinations make people feel. How would you classify this research?Descriptive or explanatory?Quantitative or qualitative?Basic or applied?

      2 A clinical psychologist, after reading the research on color and mood, decides to conduct his therapy sessions in two rooms, one painted in warm colors that tend to be calming, and one painted in colors that have no effect on mood. He hopes that his clients will be more forthcoming in the warm room. How would you classify this research?Descriptive or explanatory?Basic or applied?Laboratory or field?

      3 A developmental psychologist compares the risky decision making of preteens and teens. How would you classify this research?Descriptive or explanatory?Cross-sectional or longitudinal?

      From Existing Research

      Students planning a research project must read the existing literature in the area. After all, you don’t want to reinvent the wheel! Once you have an idea about the general area you are interested in, you should read what has been found already. No doubt, as you read the research, you will think of potentially interesting variables, populations, or methods that have not been investigated. The existing research is a great source of ideas for research topics. Understanding empirical research articles can be challenging if you are not already familiar with the topic, but the next chapter (Chapter 2) will provide help. There we will give you an overview of the parts of a research article and describe, at a conceptual level, the most common statistical analyses you will likely read about.

      Common Sense

      Psychology, more than other sciences, yields research topics based on common sense or folk wisdom. Earlier, we talked about commonsense folk wisdoms such as Absence makes the heart grow fonder and Out of sight, out СКАЧАТЬ