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Summary Notes from Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology
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Notes from chapter 1-12 from the book Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology, by Hugh Coolican
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Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology (7thed.).
Coolican, H. (2019).
Chapters 1-12
Chapter 1
Psychology, Science and Research
The main ideas are:
• Psychological researchers generally follow a scientific approach, developed from the
'emipiric method' to the hypothetical-deductive method'. This involves careful
definition and measurement, and the logic of testing hypotheses produced from
falsifiable theories. (p. 3)
• Most people use the rudimentary logic of scientific theory testing quite often in
everyday life. (p. 3)
• Although scientific thinking is a careful stretching of common sense, common sense
alone can lead to false assumptions.
• Claims about the world must always be supported by evidence. (p. 3)
• Good research is replicable; The theories are clearly explained and falsifiable. (p. 3)
• Theories in science and psychology are not proven true, but are supported or
challenged by research evidence (p. 3)
• Scientific research is a continuous and social activity that involves the promotion and
control of ideas among colleagues. (p. 3)
• Research must be carefully planned, the results must be ambiguous or useless. (p. 3)
• Some studies have strong objections to the use of traditional quantitative scientific
methods in the study of people. They support qualitative methods and data collection,
handling meaningful verbal data rather than accurate measurement and statistical
summarization. (p. 3)
Why psychology and science?
• Science is a system of thought that leads us to a rational explanation of how
things work in the world and a process of getting closer to the truth and
feasting from myths, fables, and undisputed or 'intuitive' ideas about people.
(p. 4)
Why can't we trust intuition?
• We cannot rely on intuition because it depends too much on myth, stereotype,
prejudice and received but uncontrolled wisdom. (p. 5)
,Science - not a subject, but a way of thinking
• Science is a way of thinking that leads us towards testable explanations of what is
observed in the world around us. It does not deliver 'the truth', but gives us a
reasonable account of what might happen. (p. 6)
Never use the term 'evidence'
• The word "proof" belongs to mathematics, where mathematicians prove that one side
of the equation is equal to the other. (p. 7)
Beyond Common Sense – The Formal Scientific Method
• Allport argued that psychological science should aim to 'strengthen—above the levels
achieved by common sense—our powers to predict, understand, and control human
action' (1940:23). (p. 10)
• Predict
• Know that what we observe doesn't just happen randomly
• A pattern of regularity
• Understanding
• Control, the fact that science is usually set to useful goals
• Understand and control events, improve people's lives. (p. 10)
So what is this scientific method then?
• The scientific method, as it is popularly described today, is actually a merger
of two historical models of science (p. 10)
• The empirical method (p. 10)
• hypothetical-deductive method (p. 10)
The empirical method
The original empirical method had two steps:
1. the collection of data, directly, through experience, through our external
senses, without prior notions of how they are arranged or what explains them.
(p. 10)
2. Induction of patterns and relationships in the data. That is, to see what
relationship seems to exist in our data. (p. 10)
• The empiricist argued that knowledge could only be gained through personal
experience of the world and not through inner contemplation and acceptance of
ancient wisdom. (p. 11)
Adherence to preconceptions
• As adults we have a lot of experience and it is inevitable that we adopt the
situations ideas we have accumulated, through our exposure in the world so
far, a point made strongly by schema theory in cognitive psychology. (p. 11)
• Francis Bacon's model suggested that we should only observe events and
record these as descriptions and measurements.
Such information (e.g., lengths, colors, movements) is known as data. (p. 12)
• The idea was that if we organized and compared enough data on observed events, we
would eventually perceive some regularities. (p. 12)
, • When such regularities are summarized, they become what are known as laws
throughout the process of induction, moving from specific cases to a general rule.
• These laws are mathematical equations that fully describe and predict the gravity of
matter. (p. 12)
• Thinking that we should observe behavior with a background theory, B.F. Skinner (in
the 1930s) felt that psychology was too young for big theories, and that the
psychological researcher should simply create tables of learning behaviors of animals
under different schedules of reward and punishment. (p. 12)
• The problem with this approach is that it is much more like practical technology than
theoretical science. (p. 13)
• The problem now with the pure empirical method is that we are actually working from
a background theory, otherwise how would we decide what is worth testing? (p. 13)
ASK WHY? GENERATION OF THEORIES OF LAW
• Difficult to record observations only in the pure empirical method. (p. 13)
• We ask questions while observing rather than just calmly watching. (p. 13)
• Milgram experiment, giving "electric shocks" to another just because one scientist
says so, were these participants evil? Difficult to test. (p. 13)
THEORY, HYPOTHESIS, RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS
• Theory requires proof to be supported, and this comes from a hypothesis (or several)
that one can test. (p. 13)
• In order to understand significance testing correctly (see Chapter 16), it is important
that this difference between the hypothesis and the specific test of – the research
prediction – is carefully distinguished. (p. 14)
• A hypothesis is a generalized statement about the world. A hypothesis is usually a
proposed fact about the world that follows logically from a broader background
theory. (p. 14)
• After introducing theories, hypotheses, and research predictions, we can look more
formally at the modern scientific method as used by psychologists. (p. 14)
THE HYPOTHETICAL-DEDUCTIVE METHOD - TESTING PROFESSIONAL
THEORIES
• Basically, hypothetical-deductive method means a method in which theories (general
explanations of observed 'laws' or regularities) are evaluated by generating and testing
hypotheses. (p. 14)
• Hypotheses are statements about the world that are taken from more general theories.
(p. 14)
• You can run the original experiment again to check for errors. This is called
replication. (p. 15)
REPLICATION
• If we run one experiment and get the expected result, it is always possible that this was
a fake, just a statistical peculiarity. (p. 16)
• Replication of studies is especially important in psychology, where claims are made
about the extremely varied and flexible behavior of people. (p. 16)
• Because people are so complicated, and there are so many of them, and so many
different types, we can only make estimates from examples of people's behavior. (p.
16)
, • In order to be more sure that a demonstrated psychological effect is actually a real one,
we need more psychological researchers to be able to replicate the results of the study.
(p. 16)
• To replicate, researchers require complete details of the original study and it is a
strong professional ethic that psychologists communicate their data, procedures, and
measures clearly to each other, usually in a scientific report journal. (p. 16)
• Researchers often replicate their own studies to be sure they have a real effect. (p. 17)
• However, what is published is rarely an exact replication, but usually a version of the
original with some expansion or modification (e.g., a different group, different
environments, different materials, etc.). (p. 17)
• Replication is particularly important where published findings are controversial or
contradictory to established effects or trends. (p. 17)
UNCONFIRMED THEORIES
• Researchers are constantly trying to challenge findings and to demonstrate the
limitations of an effect. (p. 18)
• if we have a scientific 'Law' and we continue to run investigations that provide even
more supporting evidence, then we don't get to know the limitations. (p. 19)
• If we want to learn more about the causes behind a phenomenon, it is fruitful to try to
find out where it is not working. (p. 19)
• Popper (1959) went so far as to say that most scientific investigations are about, or
should be about, attempts to falsify theories. (p. 19)
• We will find out if the theories are robust by trying to show that they are wrong. We
don't have to succeed.
• A great many scientific studies are designed to challenge a hypothesis in order, to rule
it out or at least to show its limits. (p. 19)
FALSIFIABILITY
• We have seen that advances in scientific understanding can be made by eliminating
alternative explanations for effects. (p. 19)
• Theories, according to Popper (1959), must be formulated in terms that make them
falsifiable. (p. 19)
• So Popper argued that for any theory to count as a scientific theory, we must at least
be able to see how it can falsify. (p. 20)
• We don't 'prove theories' – we stick to the ones that have produced the best
explanations of the data, and which so far has survived all attacks relatively
successfully. (p. 20)
Usually, at least two, if not more, theories exist and conflict with another. (p. 20)
HOW PSYCHOLOGISTS ACTUALLY DO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
• While it's easy to think of a single project that begins and ends at specific times, the
reality of research is more like a constant cycle, or even a spiral, of events. (p. 21)
• A project can be developed from a combination of current trends in research theory
and methods, from attempts to challenge competing theories, as explained earlier, or,
in the case of psychology, from important events in the everyday social world. (p. 21)
• The investigator may want to replicate a study by someone else to confirm the effect.
(p. 21)
• Or you may want to expand the findings to other areas, or to change the study
programme because it has weaknesses in the design. (p. 21)
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