Research Methods

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Research Methods

• Week 2
• HP502 Introductory Psychology Learning, Memory
  and Cognition
• Mr Simon Morris
• BA(Soc.Sc.) Monash, PostGrad Dip. Psych. Monash
• smorris_at_students.ballarat.edu.au

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Lecture outline

• Perspectives in psychology
• Characteristics of good psychological research
• Types of research
• Experimental
• Descriptive
• Correlational

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Perspectives in psychology

• Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science, observed
  that science does not progress through the
  accumulation of facts, rather it progresses on
  the development of better and better paradigms.
• A paradigm is a broad system of theoretical
  assumptions that a scientific community uses to
  make sense of the domain it is studying.
• Psychology lacks a unified paradigm but has a
  number of schools of thought, or perspectives,
  that can be used to understand psychological
  events.

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Perspectives in psychology

• Psychodynamic
• Behavioural
• Humanistic
• Cognitive

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Psychodynamic Perspective

• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a Viennese physician,
  developed a theory of mental life and behaviour
  and an approach to treating psychological
  disorders known as psychoanalysis.
• Psychodynamics refers to the dynamic interplay of
  psychological forces.

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Psychodynamic Perspective

• Key premises
• Peoples actions are determined by the way
  thoughts, feelings and wishes are connected to
  their minds.
• Many of these mental events occur outside of
  conscious awareness.
• Mental processes may conflict with another,
  leading to compromises among motives.
• Freud and his followers since have predominantly
  ignored the importance of using scientific
  methods to test and refine their hypotheses.
• Many of the concepts have become outside of
  mainstream psychology due to the lack of their
  empirical evidence.

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Psychodynamic Perspective

• Freud argued that people have powerful
  unconscious motives that underlie their conscious
  intentions.
• Many have likened that relationship between
  conscious awareness and unconscious mental forces
  to the visible tip of an iceberg, and the vast
  submerged hulk that lies out of sight beneath the
  water.
• Eg., denial, projection.

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Methods and Data

• Psychodynamic understanding seeks to interpret
  meanings to infer underlying wishes and
  patterns of thought from an individuals
  conscious, verbalised thoughts and behaviours.
• Clinicians analyse patients dreams, fantasies,
  posture and subtle behaviour towards the
  therapist.
• It relies substantially on the case study method,
  which entails in-depth observation of a small
  number of people.
• Data can be obtained directly through interview
  or through observation of infants. It is assumed
  that people reveal themselves in everything that
  they do.

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Behaviourist Perspective

• The behaviourist perspective focuses upon they
  way objects or events in the environment
  (stimuli) come to control behaviour through
  learning.
• Subsequently this perspective focuses upon the
  relationship between external (environmental)
  events and observable behaviours.
• Behaviourists assert that human behaviour, like
  other animals, can be understood entirely without
  reference to internal states such as thoughts and
  feelings.
• Behaviourists perceive psychology as the science
  of human behaviour, therefore it should be
  studied using experimentation only.

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Methods and Data

• Only observations that can be precisely and
  directly measured are valuable.
• Conscious thoughts cannot be studied as no-one
  has access to them other than the person
  reporting them.
• Behaviourists perceive humans and other animals
  like machines.
• The primary method of behaviourism is
  experimental. This entails framing a hypothesis,
  or prediction, about the way environmental events
  will effect behaviour, then testing it.

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Humanistic Perspective

• Humanistic theories focus upon the uniqueness of
  the individual.
• Carl Rogers (1902-1987) and Abraham Maslow
  (1908-1970) are two key figures.
• They both emphasise self-actualisation the idea
  that people are motivated to reach their full
  potential.
• Represents an optimistic view of human
  experience. Assumes people are ultimately good.
• Focuses on aspects of behaviour that are
  distinctly human.

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Methods and Data

• Focuses upon the individuals unique perspective
  and experience.
• Humanistic methods typically centre on helping
  individuals to understand their unique frame of
  reference and work towards achieving their best.
• Data from humanistic theory comes from thoughts,
  motives and actions that reflect a persons inner
  drive to realise their full potential.
• Prioritise the role of consciousness, giving
  little regard to unconscious processes.

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Cognitive Perspective

• Psychology has undergone a cognitive revolution
  in the past 30 years.
• The study of cognition, or thought, now dominates
  psychology.
• The cognitive perspective focuses upon the way
  people perceive, process and retrieve
  information.
• Many cognitive psychologists use the metaphor of
  the computer to understand and model the way the
  mind works.

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Methods and Data

• From this perspective, thinking is information
  processing the environment provides the inputs,
  which are transformed, stored and retrieved using
  various mental programs leading to specific
  response outputs.
• The cognitive and behavioural perspectives view
  organisms as machines that respond to
  environmental input with predictable output.
• The primary method of of research is
  experimental.
• It differs from the behaviourist perspective in
  that it uses experimental procedures to infer
  mental processes at work.

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Good Psychological Research

• Characteristics
• A theoretical framework
• A standardised procedure
• Generalisability
• Objective measurement

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Theoretical Framework

• A theory is a systematic way of organising and
  explaining observations, which includes a set of
  propositions or statements, about the
  relationship amongst various phenomena.
• The theory provides a framework for the
  researchers specific hypothesis.
• A hypothesis is a tentative belief about the
  relationship between two or more variables.
• A variable is any phenomena that can vary or
  differ, from one situation or another, or from
  one person to another.

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Standardised Procedures

• Good psychological research uses standardised
  procedures to expose to the participants in a
  study to as similar procedures as possible.
• The procedure is the same for all participants
  except where variation is introduced to test a
  hypothesis.

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Generalisability

• Research typically studies a small subset of
  people in order to learn about a larger group,
  known as the population.
• The population can be as broad as all humans, or
  as narrow as female-first-year undergraduate
  students studying in Ballarat.
• A sample is a subgroup of the population that is
  likely to be representative of the population as
  a whole.
• Generalisability refers to the applicability of
  the findings to the entire population of interest.

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Objective Measurement

• Objectivity is an important ideal in
  psychological research.
• Researchers must develop ways to quantify or
  categorise variables so they can be measured.
• A measure is a concrete way of assessing a
  variable.
• Reliability refers to a measures ability to
  produce consistent results.
• Validity refers to the measures ability to assess
  the variable it is supposed to assess.

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Experimental Research

• Is concerned with the manipulation of variables
  to assess cause and effect.
• The experimenter manipulates the independent
  variables, and assess the impact of these
  manipulations on the dependent variables.
• To assess cause and effect, experimenters present
  participants with different possible variations,
  or conditions, of the independent variable.

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Uses and Advantages

• Demonstrates causal relationships.
• The conditions and results can be replicated by
  other researchers.
• This type of research maximises control over the
  variables the researcher is interested in.

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Potential Limitations

• Questions can be raised about the
  generalisability of the results outside of the
  laboratory setting.
• Some complex human phenomena cannot be readily or
  ethically tested using pure experimental methods.

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Descriptive Research Case Study

• Provides in-depth observation of a small number
  of cases.
• Useful when trying to learn about complex
  psychological phenomena that are not yet well
  understood and require exploration or that are
  difficult to produce experimentally.

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Uses and Advantages

• Describes the psychological processes as they
  occur in individual, real-world cases.
• Provides data that can be useful in framing
  hypotheses.
• The multiple-case-study method can be used by
  studying a small number of people individually
  and drawing generalisations across them.

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Potential Limitations

• There is nothing to suggesting the findings from
  a case study are generalisable to the entire
  population.
• The results will not necessarily be able to be
  reproduced by other researchers investigating the
  same area.
• This type of research is highly susceptible to
  researcher bias.
• It can not establish causation between variables.

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Naturalistic Observation

• Provides in-depth observation of a phenomenon as
  it occurs in nature.
• Can be conducted in naturalistic settings such as
  playgrounds, classrooms and public spaces.
• Can lead to novel insights not available using
  other research methods.

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Uses and Advantages

• Reveals phenomena as they exist outside of the
  laboratory.
• Allows the study of complex phenomena not easily
  reproduced experimentally.
• Provides data that can be useful in framing
  hypotheses.

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Potential Limitations

• Little to suggest that the findings from
  naturalistic observation are generalisable to the
  entire population (although is better than single
  case studies).
• The presence of an observer may alter the
  behaviour of the participants, known as observer
  effects.
• Results can be exactly replicated.
• Cannot establish causation.
• Researcher bias.

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Survey Research

• Asks people questions about their attitudes,
  behaviours, etc.
• Most people are familiar with completing surveys
  (e.g., the Census on 8 August).
• Involves asking large samples of people to
  complete a survey orally, or in a written form.
• The two most frequently used tools are survey are
  questionnaires and interviews.

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Uses and Advantages

• This methodology reveals attitudes and
  self-reported behaviours of a large sample of
  individuals.
• Reveals information that would otherwise be
  difficult to elicit and measure.
• Allows quantification of attitudes and behaviours.

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Potential Limitations

• No way of knowing if people have reported their
  responses honestly and accurately.
• Creates issues when data is missing or
  incomplete.
• Only a representative sample can provide insight
  into how the phenomena occurs in the population.
• Causation cant be established using this method.

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Correlational Research

• Examines the extent to which two or more
  variables are related and can be used to predict
  one another.
• Although they can be data from any kind of study,
  they most commonly are used on survey data, such
  as self-report questionnaires.
• Correlation coefficients vary between 1.0 and
  1.0. A strong correlation is closer to 1 or
  -1, and means that a score on one measure can
  most confidently predict a score on another.

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Uses and Advantages

• Reveals relationships among variables as they
  occur outside of the laboratory.
• Allows for precise quantification (measurement)
  of the relationships among variables.
• Allows investigators to study a whole range of
  phenomena that occur in nature from personality
  characteristics to attitudes which cannot be
  produced in a laboratory.

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Potential Limitations

• A classic mistake is to assume that that
  correlation equals causation.
• When two variables correlate with each other, it
  does not rule out the possibility of this
  relationship being influenced by other variables
  that havent been measured.
• E.g., Correlation between ice-cream sales and
  drownings.

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Conclusions