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Behavorial Research Methods, Lecture notes of Psychology

University of ManitobaPsychology

Unit 1 is chapter 1 in textbook. It is introduction to scientific research in psychology. It also includes the comparison between non scientific and scientific methods in psychological research/ study

Typology: Lecture notes

2017/2018

Uploaded on 01/15/2018

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CHAPTER 1: SCIENCTIFIC RESEARCH IN PSYCHO
Why study research method?
•Becoming an informed consumer of health care, products, service and scientific
information know how to evaluate research critically
•Participating in public policy
•Giving you a competitive edge in many careers
•Preparing for a career in psychology
•Evaluating the efficacy of the program you join in or implement
e.g knowing how to reduce stress, how to get rid of contracting HIV,…
Methods of acquiring knowledge
Empirical way
1. Intuition:
•Knowledge that is not based on the fact and reasoned mental activity; without conscious
effort or sensory processing (e.g “vibes”, “gut feeling” or “women’s institution”
•It is when accepting your personal judgement or a single story about one’s experience tell
you about the world undoubtedly
•Happens in many forms:
+ finding an explanation for own or other’s behavior
+ used to explain stimulating events that you observe
•Personal experience:
+ belief based on direct experience – often “one-time” experience
e.g: believing UFO is real because you saw one
•Problem: causes cognitive and motivational biases effects perceptions
+ seeing what you want to see
+ believing what you want to believe
•Illusory correlation – cognitive bias:
+ 2 or more events (casually unrelated) stand out and take place together
+ a type of “cause and effect” error
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CHAPTER 1: SCIENCTIFIC RESEARCH IN PSYCHO

Why study research method?

  • Becoming an informed consumer of health care, products, service and scientific information know how to evaluate research critically
  • Participating in public policy
  • Giving you a competitive edge in many careers
  • Preparing for a career in psychology
  • Evaluating the efficacy of the program you join in or implement e.g knowing how to reduce stress, how to get rid of contracting HIV,…

Methods of acquiring knowledge

Empirical way

  1. Intuition:
  • Knowledge that is not based on the fact and reasoned mental activity; without conscious effort or sensory processing (e.g “vibes”, “gut feeling” or “women’s institution”
  • It is when accepting your personal judgement or a single story about one’s experience tell you about the world undoubtedly
  • Happens in many forms:
    • finding an explanation for own or other’s behavior
    • used to explain stimulating events that you observe
  • Personal experience:
    • belief based on direct experience – often “one-time” experience e.g: believing UFO is real because you saw one
  • Problem: causes cognitive and motivational biases effects perceptions
    • seeing what you want to see
    • believing what you want to believe
  • Illusory correlation – cognitive bias:
    • 2 or more events (casually unrelated) stand out and take place together
    • a type of “cause and effect” error
  • happens when you are highly motivated in supposed relationship e.g, thinking of your mom, few minutes later, she calls eating egg before an exam and not doing well, thinking that egg is misfortune
  • Common sense – one type of intuition: bases on informal methods or experience 3 0F B differs across time, place and culture:

e.g, the past some cultures believed (and some still do today) that mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, resulted from demonic possession. Most Canadians today, however, would agree that most mental health illnesses result from a malfunctioning brain. 3 0F B pragmatic and practical: underlying theory is supposed to be true and no systematic to explain if it is true not predict new knowledge

e.g, Raising children according to common-sense and most of them were ok. Yet, parents of autistic children gave little help because of inability to predict when it will and will not work

has significant limitation

  1. Science:
  • Organized and systematic fashion, using objective methods
  • Employs conservative rules and deliberate procedures to seek the truth scientific method 3 0F B consists of 4 steps: ‣ stating a problem or hypothesis ‣ devising an experiment to solve the problem or answer the hypothesis ‣ collecting the data from the experiment ‣ drawing conclusions based on the collected data

Non-empirical way

  1. Authority (appeal to authority):

Advantage of Science

  • Falsifiable ideas: can be either supported and refuted on basis of evidence using empirical data
    • skepticism, intuition and authority involves in all 3 but in balance
    • nothing wrong with having beliefs or opinions as long as presented simply as opinions or beliefs
    • nothing wrong with accepting the assertions of authority as long as we don’t accept uncritically
  • Pseudoscience: using scientific terms to make claims look persuasive but without scientific data not objective, not empirical, not public and verifiable and inconsistent with physical law 3 0F B Warning signs: ‣ researcher announces claims in popular media ‣ bypasses peer review ‣ claim suppression by “the establishment” ‣ findings are not falsifiable/ difficult to detect/ verify ‣ data consists of “anecdotes” ‣ claims that ancient cultures knew about it ‣ claims that “important discovery” made alone ‣ cannot be explained by known laws of nature
  • Junk science: using a valid science for unscientific goals e.g. Valid environmental research to promote end of the world scenarios

Characteristics of science and scientific research:

  • Empirical : main characteristics 3 0F Bfocusing on direct observations, experience and experimentation 3 0F B empirical data is derived through empirical method 3 0F B in basic form, it develops hypothesis

3 0F B 4 standards to characterize scientific process:

  1. Universalism:
  • scientists conduct research to test any idea (others may disagree) based on empiricism, and the research reported from both sides can be evaluated objectively by others to find the truth
  • using accepted methods of the discipline
  1. Communality:
  • methods and results are shared openly
  • others can copy/ replicate the methods used to check whether they have same results
  • results can be combined in “meta-analysis” ‣ studies combination of results of many studies of the same phenomenon to check overall effects ‣ an important tool to search on communality
  1. Disinterestedness:
  • helps to make accurate discoveries about the world
  • be willing to revise beliefs about the reality
  1. Organized skepticism:
  • all new evidence and theories should be evaluated on scientific merit
  • most directly underlies the practice of peer review before publishing
  • Objective 3 0: F B 3 0based on objective observations F B 3 0persons believe after witnessing a phenomenon F B 3 0follows a specific set of systematic and controlled or reproducible procedures orF Bsame result given by many people in same procedures observation is consistent reliable – the consistency of a measure 3 0F Bsame persons agree that the set of procedures are measuring what it is supposed to be measuring observation is valid ☛ objective concepts: 3 0 F B 3 0^ concepts are the symbols/ words used to communicate F B 3 0^ need to be specifically and systematically defined and measured F B^ no flukes allowed!
  • Open-minded and progressive: 3 0F B be willing to accept new and reliable observations as the truth 3 0F B without open mindedness to change, science would be less progressive

☛ Quantitative and qualitative 3 0F B Quantitative: descriptions are present in mathematical or statistical summaries preferred by psychologists 3 0F B Qualitative: descriptions are present in verbal reports

  1. Predicting behavior:
    • two or more events are systematically related to one another e.g, a man is good at expressing ideas also persuade others to his best ability
    • such predictive relationship don’t imply causation
    • variable: can vary from one person to person like gender, height, race, IQ, etc 3 0F B comes in all size and shape 3 0F B Not only do you have to state your variables but you also have to operationally define them.

independent variables dependent variables

manipulated by the experimenter

conditions to test the results the researcher expects to achieve

observed, recorded or measured in a study

the results measured to meet the researcher’ expectation

  • correlation doesn’t imply causation or understanding
  1. Determining the causes:
    • to discover the causes of behavior
    • to identify cause and effect relationship but still do not know actual cause e.g, does watching violent TV causes actual aggression?
    • criteria for casual claims:

a) covariation of cause and effect: ‣ effect is present cause is present ‣ no effect is present no cause is present b) temporal precedence: cause needs to be appear before effect c) elimination of alternative explanations: ‣ other causes are removed ‣ random assignment is used to achieve causation ‣ can be only done in highly controlled experiment (experimental design)

  1. Explaining behavior:
    • why the events and behavior occur
    • explanations are only tentative until a new research finds better one

Basic and applied research

1. Basic:

  • 4 goals of S.R answer fundamental question about nature of behavior
  • designed to test aspects of theories

2. Applied:

  • designed to mention practical problems and potential solutions
  • focuses on creating change and modifying human behavior
  • used to develop knowledge that is used directly. In other words, improving the quality of life
  • preventing, reducing or curing drug are considered applied research location method basic artificial pure experiment applied real-life pure descriptive

it is a continuum between basic and applied research, have to be aware where your research is on the continuum

  1. Program evaluation: type of applied research test efficacy of existing and new programs occurring at some institution level (e.g, health care, education, etc)