In summary
- Case studies
- observational studies
- Psychological tests
- surveys
- correlational studies
- Experiments
Case studies
A case study is a detailed description of a particular individual based on careful observations or formal psychological testing which may include but not limited to information about somebody’s childhood life, person’s dreams, fantasies, experiences, relationships etc.
The case study method often involves simply observing what happens a single participants or a group of individuals by considering their history as well as current life.
Academic researchers use case studies when they are just beginning to study a topic or when practical or ethical considerations prevents them from gathering information in other ways.
Case studies illustrates psychological principles in a way that abstract generalization and processed statistics can never do and they produce a more detailed picture of an individual than any other method.
Case study is not usually considered a research method but a tool for researchers to use to select methods of data collection and analysis that will generate insights in a study.
The general techniques used in case studies includes:
- unstructured interviews
- participant observations
- personal diaries
- personal notes like letters, photographs and journals
- official documents like clinical notes and appraisal reports
Field studies and Naturalistic Observations
Field studies involves making systematic observations of behavior as it occurs in natural settings where researchers observes, measures and record behavior taking care to avoid intruding on the people or animal being observed.
Remember that, Hawthorne studies showed that people changes behavior when they learn that they are being observed and may hence provide the actual picture of who they are naturally are.
Field studies can be less intrusive than surveys or experiments because researchers are not directly asking about someone’s perception but they merely record observations about a specific behavior.
unlike case studies, observational studies usually involves many participants.
Researchers can choose to record their notes as the behavior occurs or afterwards. In the later, there is less chance of forgetting the details but participants may consider this intrusive and alter the outcomes.
If the researcher waits until after the behavior occurs, the risk of being intrusive is gone but some details maybe forgotten. There are some researchers that makes audio or video recordings of the behavior and analyze them later.
The primary purpose of naturalistic observation is to find out how people or animals acts in their normal social environment
Psychologists uses naturalistic observation wherever people happen to be at home, playgrounds, streets, classrooms, offices, drinking joints, social functions etc.
Observers must strive to avoid being obvious about what they are doing so that their subjects in the study will behave naturally, otherwise they will alter their behavior in response to the feeling of being observed. Some may even move away from the scene.
Observational studies should not be done haphazardly but should be done systematically will researchers having clear picture of what data they need to collect lest they distort the study with their biasness and record carefully for others to check on their findings.
Participant observation is a form of field study where researchers also interact and play a role in the behavior as well as they record the social behavior.
Sometimes psychologists prefer to make observations in a laboratory settings where they have more control of the situation as they can use sophisticated equipment, determine the number of people who will be observed and maintain focus on research problems.
Psychological tests
Psychological tests (assessment instruments) are procedures for measuring and evaluating personality traits, emotions, aptitudes, interests, abilities and values usually by requiring people to answer a series of written or oral questions. The answers to the questions are totalled to yield a single numerical score or a set of scores.
There are usually two types of test that can be applied:
Objective (inventories) tests measures beliefs, feelings or behaviors of which a person observed is ware about and projectile tests which are designed to tap to unconscious feelings or motives.These tests includes tests we have taken as personality tests, an achievement tests or a vocational-aptitude test.
Tests may be used to promote self understanding, evaluate psychological treatments or in scientific research to draw generalization about human behavior. Well-constructed psychological tests are a great improvement over simple self-evaluation, because many people have a distorted view of their own abilities and traits.
Scoring is usually by referring to norms or established standards of performance. Norms determines which scores can be considered high, low or average.
Test must be reliable in that it must produce consistent results that will not change due to movement of time or change of location. For example same person getting different results when he/she does the same test in two different days of the week.
Psychologists can measure test-retest reliability by giving the test twice to the same group of people and comparing the two sets numerically. A reliable test will give similar results in different sessions.
A draw back on test-retest reliability is that individuals will score better in a repeated test because they are already familiar with the test. A solution to this is to give an alternate-forms reliability where similar format is used questions contents are different to remove familiarity.
A valid test is a test that measures what it is supposed to measure.
Criterion validity is the ability to predict independent measures or the criteria of the trait in question for example the criterion validity in an aptitude test might be grades while criterion for shyness test is assessment of behavior in social contexts.
Criticisms and reevaluations of psychological tests keeps psychological assessments honest and scientifically rigorous .
The pop-psych tests found in magazines, newspapers and internet usually have not been evaluated for their validity or reliability( I.Wade,Carole, 2013).
Surveys
Survey is a procedure where researchers asks a series of questions to members of a population. surveys are questionnaires and interviews that gather information by asking people directly about their experiences, attitudes and opinions.
i. An interview
it is where a researcher asks questions from respondents and record their answers which will be used to extract information and knowledge after analysis. Apart from questions answered, researcher may pay attention to respondent’s verbal and non-verbal communications. Interviews follows a more or less structured schedule, which outlines what questions needs to be asked. However, face to face interview can be quite expensive due to transport costs, training interviews and hotel expensive among others.
ii. Questionnaire
It is a survey that involves respondents reading and answering questions on paper on their own time with no researcher’s presence. Though cheaper than live interviews, they have lower response rate which is the percentage of people that responds and complete the survey over the number of people contacted and asked to respond to the questionnaires.
challenges involved with surveys
Surveys produces large amount of data but sampling problems are often an issue, for example, popular polls and surveys have been observed to suffer from volunteer bias. People who refuses to participate in a survey can be having useful opinions that could totally alter the outcomes of the survey.
Another shortcomings of survey is that people may not be totally honest with their opinions especially if it is about sensitive matters. For example girls in church claims to be virgins while they are have been sexually active because of the judgements they may receive from the faithfuls.
Researchers can check for honesty by asking the same question several times with different wording and measure consistency of the answers.
Respondents may be honest but misinterpret survey questions, hold inaccurate perception of their own behavior or they have forgotten the details. To avoid misinterpretation, one should be careful when framing the questions.
Feeling of anonymous like an online survey can result to more honest response.
Correlational studies
Technically, a correlation is a numerical measure of the strength of the relation between two things. a good example where we can measure correlations is comparing student’s scores versus time spent in studying.
A positive correlation means that high values of one variable are associated with high values of the second variable and low values of one with low values of the other. Examples of positive correlation includes height versus weight, education versus income, IQ versus school grade etc.
Negative correlation means high value of one variable results to low values of the other. For example, school grades and hours spent on TV will most likely bring negative correlation.
Zero correlation means means no relations exists between the two variables and so they are said to be uncorrelated.
The statistic used used to express correlation is referred to as the coefficient of correlation.
A perfect coefficient of correlation has a value of +1.00 and a perfect negative coefficient of correlation has a value of -1.00
Challenges with correlational studies
one issue with correlation is that, even when correlations are meaningful, they can be hard to interpret because a correlation does not establish causation. It is easy for us to assume that, if A is highly correlated to B, A must be causing B but that is not always the case.
Experiments
Researchers uses experimental methods when they want to track down the causes of behavior where experiments allows them to control and manipulate the situations being studied.
Instead of being a passive recorder of information,the researcher actively does something he/she believes will affects people or animal’s behavior and then observes what happens hence getting opportunities to draw conclusions about cause and effect.
The aspect of an experimental situation manipulated or varied by the researcher is referred to as the independent variable and the reaction of the participants or the behavior the experimenter want to observe is known as the dependant variable.
In experiments, researchers manipulates one or more variables hypothesized to be affecting the dependant variables by creating two or more comparison groups with different values of the independent variables.
The conditions of the experiments are kept the same except what need to be observed.
In the simplest case, two groups are compared with one group being exposed to some treatment and another group not exposed to treatment.
Archival research and Content analysis
This involves examination of data that has already been compiled. Archival research involves the acquisition and study of information that has already been collected. Large data sets may be acquired from the government offices, schools, college and universities, companies, NGOs, publications etc.
Content analysis entails systematic scrutiny of documents to identify certain characteristics and their occurrence.
Conclusion
Psychology involves a lot of research. There are many methods of research which includes surveys, experiments,case studies, observations, tests and archival research.
None of the methods is perfect but each depends on the nature of study and resources available to the researcher.
Related topics
- History of psychology
- Psychology as a science
- Branches of psychology
- Introduction to Psychology
- Introduction to social psychology