Psychology Research Techniques Study Guide

Psychology Research Techniques Study Guide

1. What are the dimensions along which research may fall?

Experimental--- non-experimental/naturalistic observation

Hypothesis testing--- exploratory

Structured---- unstructured

Interaction role---- unobtrusive observer

2. What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative is about the words and descriptions, not the numbers; cant run a statistical analysis for qualitative; might use a narrative or focus groups

Need to do a “content analysis” using a coding schema for qualitative

Big benefit= more detail, more contextual information

3. What are the types of observational studies? Why would a researcher choose a particular type of design and the limitations of each.

Case Study: description of an individual by an outside observer; use when you cannot manipulate and when it is something rare that you cant find a lot of people for ex: rare brain problem; drawback= may not be generalizable and lots of possibilities for bias (person is relying on self report and memory, researcher may also have a bias for a particular goal)

Archival Research: use previous research to test new questions, it can range from statistical data to survey research to employment organizations to newspapers and so on; benefit= examine large groups/populations and trends over time; limitations=you are not creating the questions, the way the data is collected may not be in line with your questions, limited by another researchers goals and ideas

Naturalistic Observation VS Systematic Observation; naturalistic is more open, describing all behaviors that happen in detail; systematic is more limited, looking at specific behaviors. However, both are considered field studies; benefits of field studies= not limited by the isolated room/context, for example raining versus not raining, less demand characteristics and social desirability because they don’t know they are being studied; drawbacks= limited control, cant manipulate or randomly assign, cant do hypothesis tests (more for exploratory research)

Participant observer= type of field study; researcher joins a group in order to get a more close observation; biggest concern= ethics

Surveys and questionnaires:

4. What is survey research and two goals/types of survey research? (Be able to identify.)

Goals= description (trying to describe behavior) and prediction (also called analytic) (relationships