Chapter 1 & 2 & 3 - Research Methods

The problem with using _____ to obtain knowledge is that they may be wrong, they may just be using their intuition to arrive at their conclusions, and they may have their own reasons to mislead you. Nevertheless, much of the information we acquire is through authority because we don't have time to question and independently research every piece of knowledge we learn through _____.

authority

hree of the most common sources of inspiration are

informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.

The outcomes if specific events take place. Ex. The question of whether cell phone use impairs driving is interesting because it is relevant to the personal safety of everyone who travels by car and to the debate over whether cell phone use should be restricted by law.

practical implications.

procedure to identify and eliminate participants who are at high risk.

pre-screening

_____ is conducted primarily to address some practical problem. Research on the effects of cell phone use on driving, for example, was prompted by safety concerns and has led to the enactment of laws to limit this practice

Applied research

The 5 methods of acquiring knowledge: his method involves accepting new ideas because some ____ figure states that they are true. (One of the most common methods of acquiring knowledge.)

Authority

_______ in psychology is conducted primarily for the sake of achieving a more detailed and accurate understanding of human behavior, without necessarily trying to address any particular practical problem.

Basic research

explicitly recognized the principle of seeking justice, including the importance of conducting research in a way that distributes risks and benefits fairly across different groups at the societal level. It also recognized the importance of respect for persons, which acknowledges individuals' autonomy and protection for those with diminished autonomy (e.g., prisoners, children), and translates to the need for informed consent. Finally, it recognized the principle of beneficence, which underscores the importance of maximizing the benefits of research while minimizing harms to participants and society.

Belmont Report.

The problem with relying on intuition is that our intuitions can be wrong because they are driven by ______ and _________ biases rather than logical reasoning or scientific evidence. While the strange behavior of your friend may lead you to think s/he is lying to you it may just be that s/he is holding in a bit of gas or is preoccupied with some other issue that is irrelevant to you. However, weighing alternatives and thinking of all the different possibilities can be paralyzing for some people and sometimes decisions based on intuition are actually superior to those based on analysis

Cognitive, motivational

The branch of philosophy that is concerned with morality—what it means to behave morally and how people can achieve that goal.

Ethics

ethics code that was created by the World Medical Council in 1964. Among the standards that it added to the Nuremberg Code was that research with human participants should be based on a written protocol—a detailed description of the research—that is reviewed by an independent committee.

Declaration of Helsinki

In which part of a current research article should you look for new ideas for future research questions?

Discussion section

have an editor or a small group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic.

Edited volumes

Describes one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors.

Empirical research reports

The 5 methods of acquiring knowledge: _____ involves acquiring knowledge through observation and experience.

Empiricism

is the lowest level or risk and includes research on the effectiveness of normal educational activities, the use of standard psychological measures and surveys of a nonsensitive nature that are administered in a way that maintains confidentiality, and research using existing data from public sources. It is called ____ because once approved, it is ______ from regular, continuous review.

Exempt research, exempt

The federal regulations also distinguish research that poses three levels of risk

Exempt research, expedited research, greater than minimal risk research

poses a somewhat higher risk than exempt, but still exposes participants to risks that are no greater than minimal risk (those encountered by healthy people in daily life or during routine physical or psychological examinations).

Expedited research

Belmont Report became the basis of a set of laws that apply to research conducted, supported, or regulated by the federal government. An extremely important part of these regulations is that universities, hospitals, and other institutions that receive support from the federal government must establish an institutional review board (IRB)

FederalPolicyfortheProtectionofHumanSubjects

One is that learning about pseudoscience helps bring the fundamental features of science—and their importance—into sharper focus

First reason we should concern ourselves with pseudoscience

For example, a researcher could focus on the process of habituation—perhaps hypothesizing that people should show fewer signs of emotional distress with each new writing session. This is an example of...

Focusing on a component of a theory to derive a hypothesis

- try to think of reasons to expect different answers to the question—especially ones that seem to conflict with common sense

How to identify if a question will provoke doubt?

include direct observations of our own and others' behavior as well as secondhand observations from non-scientific sources such as newspapers, books, blogs, and so on.

Informal observations

The 5 methods of acquiring knowledge: When we use our _____, we are relying on our guts, our emotions, and/or our instincts to guide us. Rather than examining facts or using rational thought, _____ involves believing what feels true.

Intuition

treat their participants fairly.

Justice

are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners.

Scholarly books

a set of 10 principles written in 1947 in conjunction with the trials of Nazi physicians accused of shockingly cruel research on concentration camp prisoners during World War II.

Nuremberg Code

autonomy—their right to make their own choices and take their own actions free from coercion.

People's rights and dignity

privacy—their right to decide what information about them is shared with others.

People's rights and dignity

periodicals that publish original research articles.

Professional journals

_______ refers to activities and beliefs that are claimed to be scientific by their proponents—and may appear to be scientific at first glance—but are not.

Pseudoscience

is so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going back more than 100 years—that for most purposes its content is synonymous with the research literature in psychology.

PsycINFO

The 5 methods of acquiring knowledge: ______ involves using logic and reasoning to acquire new knowledge. Using this method premises are stated and logical rules are followed to arrive at sound conclusions.

Rationalism

- It can tell you if a research question has already been answered. - It can help you evaluate the interestingness of a research question. - It can give you ideas for how to conduct your own study. - It can tell you how your study fits into the research literature.

Research literature

Good research must begin with a good _______

Research question

________ often begin as more general research ideas—usually focusing on some behavior or psychological characteristic: talkativeness, learning, depression, bungee jumping, and so on.

Research questions

summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results.

Review articles

means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your topic of interest.

Reviewing the research literature

biorhythms, psychic powers, astrology, and many other pseudoscientific beliefs 8 | Understanding Science are widely held and are promoted on the Internet, on television, and in books and magazines. Far from being harmless, the promotion of these beliefs often results in great personal toll as, for example, believers in pseudoscience opt for "treatments" such as homeopathy for serious medical conditions instead of empirically-supported treatments. Learning what makes them pseudoscientific can help us to identify and evaluate such beliefs and practices when we encounter them.

Second reason we should concern ourselves with pseudoscience

was first published in 1953 and has been revised several times since then, most recently in 2010. It includes about 150 specific ethical standards that psychologists and their students are expected to follow. Much of the APA Ethics Code concerns the clinical practice of psychology—advertising one's services, setting and collecting fees, having personal relationships with clients, and so on.

The APA's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (also known as the APA Ethics Code)

Science is a social process—a large- scale collaboration among many researchers distributed across both time and space. Our current scientific knowledge of most topics is based on many different studies conducted by many different researchers who have shared their work publicly over many years.

The first reason for publication being essential

simple model of scientific research in psychology

The researchers formulate a research question, conduct an empirical study designed to answer the question, analyze the resulting data, draw conclusions about the answer to the question, and publishes the results so that they become part of the research literature

Publication allows science to be self-correcting. Individual scientists understand that, despite their best efforts, their methods can be flawed and their conclusions incorrect. Publication allows others in the scientific community to detect and correct these errors so that, over time, scientific knowledge increasingly reflects the way the world actually is.

The second reason for publication being essential

many pseudosciences purport to explain some aspects of human behavior and mental processes, including biorhythms, astrology, graphology (handwriting analysis), and magnet therapy for pain control. It is important for students of psychology to distinguish their own field clearly from this "pseudo-psychology."

Third reason we should concern ourselves with pseudoscience

the answer is in doubt, the answer fills a gap in the research literature, and the answer has important practical implications.

Three factors that affect interstingness

The three goals of science: This goal is achieved by making careful observations. As an example, perhaps I am interested in better understanding the medical conditions that medical marijuana patients use marijuana to treat. In this case, I could try to access records at several large medical marijuana licensing centers to see which conditions people are getting licensed to use medical marijuana. Or I could survey a large sample of medical marijuana patients and ask them to report which medical conditions they use marijuana to treat or manage. Indeed, research involving surveys of medical marijuana patients has been conducted and has found that the primary symptom medical marijuana patients use marijuana to treat is pain, followed by anxiety and depression

To describe

If you were interested in talkativeness, for example, it might occur to you that a possible cause of this psychological characteristic is family size. Is there a relationship between family size and talkativeness? This is an example of...

a relationship between that behavior or characteristic and some other variable.

"If drive theory is correct, then cockroaches should run through a straight runway faster, and a branching runway more slowly, when other cockroaches are present." This is an example of...

an if-then relationship

Certainly we all have intuitive beliefs about people's behavior, thoughts, and feelings—and these beliefs are collectively referred to as

folk psychology

How to search for literature

be selective, focus on recent research, review articles

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

committee of administrators, scientists, and community members that reviews proposals for research involving human participants

How many words on average do people speak per day? How accurate are our memories of traumatic events? What percentage of people have sought professional help for depression? This is an example of...

conceptualizing a topic as a variable

a helper who pretended to be a real participant

confederate

Heuristics are compounded by the fact that we then tend to focus on cases that confirm our intuitive beliefs and not on cases that disconfirm them. For example, once we begin to believe that women are more talkative than men, we tend to notice and remember talkative women and silent men but ignore or forget silent women and talkative men.

confirmation bias

While scientists may use intuition, authority, rationalism, and empiricism to generate new ideas they don't stop there. Scientists go a step further by using systematic empiricism to make careful observations under various _________ in order to test their ideas and they use rationalism to arrive at valid conclusions. While the scientific method is the most likely of all of the methods to produce valid knowledge, like all methods of acquiring knowledge it also has its drawbacks.

controlled conditions

One way is to generate a research question using the techniques discussed in this chapter and then ask whether any theory implies an answer to that question. For example, you might wonder whether expressive writing about positive experiences improves health as much as expressive writing about traumatic experiences. Although this question is an interesting one on its own, you might then ask whether the habituation theory—the idea that expressive writing causes people to habituate to negative thoughts and feelings—implies an answer. This is an example of...

deriving a hypothesis from a theory

Three goals of science

describe, predict, explain

as the reviewers do not know the identity of the researcher(s) and vice versa.

double-blind peer review

These are questions about the way the world actually is and, therefore, can be answered by systematically observing it. The question of whether women talk more than men is empirical in this way. Either women really do talk more than men or they do not, and this can be determined by systematically observing how much women and men actually talk.

empirical questions

Having said this, there are many interesting and important questions that are not _______ testable and that science is not in a position to answer. Among these are questions about values—whether things are good or bad, just or unjust, or beautiful or ugly, and how the world ought. It is especially important for researchers in psychology to be mindful of this distinction.

empirically

questions expressed in terms of a single variable or relationship between variables.

empirically testable research questions

Among the risks to research participants are that a treatment might

fail to help or even be harmful, a procedure might result in physical or psychological harm, and their right to privacy might be violated.

Karl Popper that any scientific claim must be expressed in such a way that there are observations that would—if they were made—count as evidence against the claim.

falsifiable

acting with integrity, seeking justice, and respecting people's rights and dignity provide a useful starting point for thinking about the ethics of psychological research because essentially everyone agrees on them.

general moral principles of weighing risks against benefits

must be reviewed by the full board of IRB members

greater than minimal risk research

we tend to rely on mental shortcuts referred to as

heuristics

_____ is a specific prediction about a new phenomenon that should be observed if a particular theory is accurate.

hypothesis

(although this term is much more likely to be used by philosophers of science than by scientists themselves). Researchers begin with a set of phenomena and either construct a theory to explain or interpret them or choose an existing theory to work with. They then make a prediction about some new phenomenon that should be observed if the theory is correct. Again, this prediction is called a hypothesis. The researchers then conduct an empirical study to test the hypothesis. Finally, they reevaluate the theory in light of the new results and revise it if necessary. This process is usually conceptualized as a cycle because the researchers can then derive a new hypothesis from the revised theory, conduct a new empirical study to test the hypothesis, and so on.

hypotheticodeductive method

Theories and hypotheses always have this ______ relationship

if-then

carrying out their research in a thorough and competent manner, meeting their professional obligations, and being truthful.

integrity

Among the potential benefits are receiving a helpful treatment,

learning about psychology, experiencing the satisfaction of contributing to scientific knowledge, and receiving money or course credit for participating.

when a review article provides a statistical summary of all of the previous results it is referred to as a

meta-analysis.

is written by a single author or a small group of authors and usually, gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review article

monograph

scientists learn about the ____________ systematically, by carefully planning, making, recording, and analyzing observations of it.

natural world

benefits of research on ______ can outweigh the costs, in which case it is ethically acceptable. However, researchers must use alternative methods when they can. When they cannot, they must acquire and care for their subjects humanely and minimize the harm to them.

nonhuman animals

Empiricism refers to learning based on _____

observation

Probably the most common inspiration for new research ideas is

previous research

After asking their empirical questions, making their systematic observations, and drawing their conclusions, scientists publish their work. This usually means writing an article for publication in a professional journal, in which they put their research question in the context of previous research, describe in detail the methods they used to answer their question, and clearly present their results and conclusions. Increasingly, scientists are opting to publish their work in open access journals, in which the articles are freely available to all - scientists and nonscientists alike. This important choice allows publicly-funded research to create knowledge that is truly public. This is an example of which of the three fundamental feature of the scientific approach , ______

public knowledge

_____ is an essential feature of science

publication

The problem with this method is that if the premises are wrong or there is an error in logic then the conclusion will not be valid. For instance, the premise that all swans are white is incorrect; there are black swans in Australia. Also, unless formally trained in the rules of logic it is easy to make an error. Nevertheless, if the premises are correct and logical rules are followed appropriately then this is sound means of acquiring knowledge.

rationalism

Scientific research in psychology can be ethical only if...

risks are outweighed by its benefits.

Psychology is a ____ because it takes this same general approach to understanding one aspect of the natural world: human behavior.

science

One major problem is that it is not always feasible to use the _________; this method can require considerable time and resources. Another problem with the _____ is that it cannot be used to answer all questions. As described in the following section, the scientific method can only be used to address empirical questions.

scientific method

process of systematically collecting and evaluating evidence to test ideas and answer questions

scientific method

You should keep signed consent forms_____ from any data that you collect and in such a way that no individual's name can be linked to their data. In addition, beyond people's sex and age, you should only collect personal information that you actually need to answer your research question.

separately

Being ______ does not mean being cynical or distrustful, nor does it mean questioning every belief or claim one comes across (which would be impossible anyway). Instead, it means pausing to consider alternatives and to search for evidence—especially systematically collected empirical evidence—when there is enough at stake to justify doing so.

skepticism

We are limited in what we can experience and observe and our senses can deceive us. Moreover, our prior experiences can alter the way we perceive events. Nevertheless, empiricism is at the heart of the scientific method. Science relies on observations. But not just any observations, science relies on structured observations which is known as ___________.

systematic empiricism

Three fundamental features of the general scientific approach.

systematic empiricism, empirical questions, public knowledge

A set of beliefs or activities can be said to be pseudoscientific if (a) its adherents claim or imply that it is scientific but (b) it lacks one or more of the three features of science. The three features are

systematic empiricism, public knowledge, scientific research

When a review article is devoted 30 | Finding a Research Topic primarily to presenting a new theory, it is often referred to as a

theoretical article.

Among the very best hypotheses are those that distinguish between competing _____

theories

Coherent explanation or interpretation of one or more phenomena. They explain by including variables, structures, processes, functions, or organizing principles that have not been observed directly.

theory

- testable and falsifiable. -logical. -positive (prove existence)

three general characteristics of a good hypothesis.

This goal involves determining the causes of behavior. For example, researchers might try to understand the mechanisms through which marijuana reduces pain. Does marijuana reduce inflammation which in turn reduces pain? Or does marijuana simply reduce the distress associated with pain rather than reducing pain itself? As you can see these questions tap at the underlying mechanisms and causal relationships.

to explain

The three goals of science: Once we have observed with some regularity that two behaviors or events are systematically related to one another we can use that information to predict whether an event or behavior will occur in a certain situation. Once I know that most medical marijuana patients use marijuana to treat pain I can use that information ________ that an individual who uses medical marijuana likely experiences pain. Of course, my predictions will not be 100% accurate but if the relationship between medical marijuana use and pain is strong then my predictions will have greater than chance accuracy.

to predict

There is often not enough evidence to fully evaluate a belief or claim, so scientists accept that there are many things that they simply do not know.

tolerance for uncertainty.

- To raise a research question, answer that question by conducting a new study, and then offer one or more theories (usually more) to explain or interpret the results. This format works well for applied research questions and for research questions that existing theories do not address. -To describe one or more existing theories, derive a hypothesis from one of those theories, test the hypothesis in a new study, and finally reevaluate the theory. This format works well when there is an existing theory that addresses the research question—especially if the resulting hypothesis is surprising or conflicts with a hypothesis derived from a different theory.

two basic ways that researchers usually include theory when writing a research report or planning a presentation

the interestingness of the question and the feasibility of answering it.

two criteria for evaluating research questions