Cozby provide a nice overview of the major APA style journals [Table 2.1
]Getting
Started
When starting
out on a research project, what do you do?
Setting the Stage
Remove all of your personal qualities and humanness?
Spend hours reflecting and trying to figure out who you are?
Understand your context and biases?
Express your standpoint or orientation towards the world, your 'subjects' and your methods?
Once you get beyond the trauma of these
existential and methodological concerns and
start thinking that you can conduct research you will begin with asking a
question.
Defining the Question
Where does your question arise from?
A theoretical idea through a
Literature Review? (PsychInfo)(Google
Scholar)
Personal Life Experiences?
Community needs or crises?
Global Events?
Class activity - Discuss with your
neighbour and prepare to talk to the class about what your question might be.
What psychological question, do you want to answer or
understand?
Selecting a Population to Sample
Contingent upon the Question
and limited by
Sampling Techniques
How and Why?
(implications and consequences)
Design the model or the logic of
tests
What is the worldview or
general research model that you are going work with?
i.e. are you seeking to find a mechanical or psychological cause
behind some phenomenon?
are you trying to understand the characteristics of some
phenomenon?
Qualitative,
Quantitative, Descriptive,
Correlational,
Analytical,
Inferential
E.g., Narratives, Focus Groups, Surveys, Controls,
Between-Within blocked, Latin Squared, ....
Selecting measures and types
of analyses
Variable Types (limitations and liberties)
nominal, ordinal, interval,
contextual, categorical, ....
Operational
Getting Ethical Approval and conducting the study
Analyzing the measurement tools and making sense of the data
Technical / Logical issues (Reliability, Construct Validity)
Semiotic (Semantic and Pragmatic) concerns ( Meaning and Ecological Validity)
Cultural issues,....(Values, Understanding, Politics)
Applying the Results
Next
Question (which variables or revisions are needing further work)
Where are the holes in the present study that can be filled?
What unexpected results arose and beg new questions?
Making a
Difference (Application to the world)
Controlling circumstance and behaviour
Social Action and Social Change
Future Considerations
Theories &
Knowledge
What is the impact on the theory or theories at hand?
Is there a need to generate a new theory or revise or resurrect and old
one?
Techniques and
Standards (possible comparisons & evaluations)
Meta-Analysis is often conducted here to compare methods use to study a
common issue or phenomenon (i.e.,
acculturation)
Contributions to
Substantive issues (ontologies & worldviews)
Theory & Psychology
Journal of Theoretical and
Philosophical Psychology
Psychological Bulletin
Psychological Review
Culture & Psychology
Cozby (2009) Understanding Research and Research Articles
Theories
Psychology is a theory-driven discipline whereby the ideal is to establish and then test theories.
This is done in various ways sometimes with pre-existing theories from psychology or other neighbouring disciplines (e.g. biology and Darwin's theory of evolution).
Other times, exploratory studies reveal some interesting results or unexpected phenomena that one then attempts to integrate with an existing theory. Sometimes there is no adequate theory that explains the phenomena, hence the need to generate a new theory.
Too often in psychology our theories are incomplete and partial or limited in their scope. E.g. cognitive dissonance, obedience to authority, neural encoding theories.
Hypothesis
Hypotheses are the cornerstone of research in psychology whereby they are the elements of theories that we test and evaluate as a reflection of the larger theory.
An hypothesis hence is a specific statement about research data, usually indicating the direction of a relationship (e.g., women are higher in verbal abilities than men).
Operational Definitions are an integral part of the research process. As indicated in historical accounts, the operational definition comes from operational analysis which was an attempt to clarify concepts used in science by articulating the behavioural and psychological operations used to measure a given phenomenon.
As indicated in lecture one, when psychologists caught wind of this procedure from physics, they (Boring and Stevens) readily made use of it as a way to make psychology "scientific."
Today we treat operational definitions like a touch-stone, whereby when used our concepts (theoretical constructs) become reified and made into real entities that can be manipulated and measured.
Sigmund Koch and Percy Bridgeman (the originator of operational analysis) later came to harshly criticize the ways in which psychologists had taken his methods and turned it into a "Frankenstein", leading to a situation where psychology was seen to be in a state of "total disorientation".
Nature of Psychological Journals
Cozby provide a nice overview of the major APA style journals [Table 2.1
]
Nature of Research Article
Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion
References