Summary of the book ‘Research Methods in Psychology’
Written by Senna Vromans
Contents:
Chapter one: Psychology is a way of thinking 2
Chapter two: Sources of information: Why Research Is Best and How to Find It 4
Chapter three: Three claims, four validities: interrogation tools for consumers of research5
Chapter four: Ethical Guidelines for Psychology Research 7
Chapter five: Identifying good measurement 8
Chapter six: Surveys and Observations: Describing What People Do 10
Chapter seven: Sampling: Estimating the Frequency of Behaviors and Beliefs 12
Chapter eight: Bivariate Correlational Research 14
Chapter ten: Introduction to Simple Experiments 16
Chapter eleven: More on experiments: Confounding and obscuring variables 19
Chapter twelve: Experiments with more than one independent variable 22
Chapter thirteen: Quasi-Experiments and Small-N Designs 24
Chapter fourteen: Replication, Generalization, and the real world 27
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,Chapter one: Psychology is a way of thinking
Psychologists are empiricists. (to answer psychological questions with direct formal observations
and to communicate with others about what they have learned/ systematically observing the
world).
To think like a psychologist is to think like a researcher, seeing as psychology is passed on research.
There are two roles in psychology:
1. Producer of research: Someone who conducts research by (for example) documenting
behavior or by making questionaries. They become a research scientist or a professor for
example.
2. Consumer of research:
- Reads about research, so they can later apply it to their work (therapists or advisors),
hobbies, relationships or personal growth.
- Good consumer of research skills: by understanding research methods, enables you to ask
the appropriate questions so you can evaluate information correctly and make better,
more informed decisions.
- Interrogating information: ask the right questions, determine the answers and evaluate a
story.
Most psychologists engage in both the producing and the consuming role. Both roles commit to
the practice of empiricism (this involves using evidence from the senses or from instruments that
assist the senses (thermometers, weight scales, etc.)
Evidence-based treatments: therapies that are supported by research.
How scientists approach their work:
1. They act as empiricists in their investigations, because empiricism is considered the most
reliable basis for conclusions.
2. They test theories through research and revise their theories based on the resulting data.
The empirical cycle: You observe something from which you form a theory, which is called
induction. From this theory you form a hypothesis, this is called deduction. You will then
test this hypothesis from which you will make an evaluation. Eventually you will make new
observations. This cycle is quite similar to the Theory-data cycle (as mentioned in the
book), but in this course we will stick to the empirical cycle.
Theory: A set of statements that describes general principles about how variables relate to
one another.
o Good theories are supported by data from research studies, falsifiable and have
parsimony.
o Non-scientific theory (NL: niet-wetenschappelijke theorie): It is forbidden to make
short-cuts in the cycle. However, some studies do this by evading the testing phase.
This means that they are in line with all possible observations and that the theory is
not falsifiable (because of this you can’t determine which of the theories is the correct
one and so you will not come closer to an explanation for a certain phenomenon.
Hypothesis (or prediction): the specific outcome the researcher expects to observe in a
study if the theory is accurate.
Data: a set of observations. Data can support a theory or undermine it.
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, The difference between a theory and a hypothesis: A theory is more general, and a hypothesis is
more specific. If your hypothesis seems to be correct, it is considered not disproven for the time
being. If your hypothesis seems to be incorrect, it is considered disproven. If you keep continuing
new studies on a theory that has been disproven several times, your hypothesis can become
unfalsifiable.
Falsifiability: a theory must lead to hypotheses that, when tested, could actually fail to support the
theory. In theory it should be possible to have observations that are not in line with the
hypotheses.
To find out if a theory is falsifiable you can ask yourself the questions: are there possible
observations which are not in line with the hypotheses/observations that have not been
described? And what would these observations be? The formulation of the hypotheses is
important as you are finding out if the hypotheses are falsifiable and not the entire theory.
Parsimony: If two theories explain the data equally well, most scientists will opt for the simpler/
more parsimonious theory.
3. They take an empirical approach to both applied research (which is done with a practical
problem in mind and so the work is conducted in a real-world context, for example whether or
not a school district’s new method of teaching language arts is working better than the former
one) and basic research (which is intended to enhance the general body of knowledge, for
example researchers will try to understand the capacity of human memory or the motivations
of a depressed person).
- Translational research: represents a dynamic bridge from basic to applied research. For
example; basic research on the biochemistry of cell membranes might be translated into a
new drug for schizophrenia. Applied research will then research whether or not this new
drug has a positive effect on these patients or not.
4. They go further: as soon as they have discovered an effect, scientists plan further research to
test why, when, or for whom an effect works. Each study leads them to ask a new question and
so they investigate on.
5. They make their work public.
- First the scientists write and submit their paper to a scientific journal (these articles are
peer-reviewed).
- The editor sends the paper to three or four anonymous experts on the subject, who
review it.
- The editor then decides, considering these reviews, whether the paper deserves to be
published or not.
Journalists: writers for the popular media who are skilled at transforming scientific studies for the
general public, but they don’t always get it right.
- Scientists never use the word prove in science. So, if this word is in a headline, be skeptical
about it.
Chapter 2: Sources of information: Why Research Is Best and How to Find It
Research vs own intuition
Ways that Intuition is Biased:
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