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Research Methods in Psychology: Key Takeaways and Exercises

Research Methods in Psychology
Key Takeaways and Exercises

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Notes

table of contents
  1. Acknowledgements
  2. About this Book
  3. About the Authors of the Current Edition
  4. Preface
  5. The Science of Psychology
    1. Methods of Knowing
    2. Understanding Science
    3. Goals of Science
    4. Science and Common Sense
    5. Experimental and Clinical Psychologists
    6. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  6. Overview of the Scientific Method
    1. A Model of Scientific Research in Psychology
    2. Finding a Research Topic
    3. Generating Good Research Questions
    4. Developing a Hypothesis
    5. Designing a Research Study
    6. Analyzing the Data
    7. Drawing Conclusions and Reporting the Results
    8. Key Takeaways and Exercise
  7. Research Ethics
    1. Moral Foundations of Ethical Research
    2. From Moral Principles to Ethics Codes
    3. Putting Ethics Into Practice
    4. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  8. Psychological Measurement
    1. Understanding Psychological Measurement
    2. Reliability and Validity of Measurement
    3. Practical Strategies for Psychological Measurement
    4. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  9. Experimental Research
    1. Experiment Basics
    2. Experimental Design
    3. Experimentation and Validity
    4. Practical Considerations
    5. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  10. Non-Experimental Research
    1. Overview of Non-Experimental Research
    2. Correlational Research
    3. Complex Correlation
    4. Qualitative Research
    5. Observational Research
    6. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  11. Survey Research
    1. Overview of Survey Research
    2. Constructing Surveys
    3. Conducting Surveys
    4. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  12. Quasi-Experimental Research
    1. One-Group Designs
    2. Non-Equivalent Groups Designs
    3. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  13. Factorial Designs
    1. Setting Up a Factorial Experiment
    2. Interpreting the Results of a Factorial Experiment
    3. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  14. Single-Subject Research
    1. Overview of Single-Subject Research
    2. Single-Subject Research Designs
    3. The Single-Subject Versus Group “Debate”
    4. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  15. Presenting Your Research
    1. American Psychological Association (APA) Style
    2. Writing a Research Report in American Psychological Association (APA) Style
    3. Other Presentation Formats
    4. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  16. Descriptive Statistics
    1. Describing Single Variables
    2. Describing Statistical Relationships
    3. Expressing Your Results
    4. Conducting Your Analyses
    5. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  17. Inferential Statistics
    1. Understanding Null Hypothesis Testing
    2. Some Basic Null Hypothesis Tests
    3. Additional Considerations
    4. From the “Replicability Crisis” to Open Science Practices
    5. Key Takeaways and Exercises
  18. Glossary
  19. References

22

Key Takeaways and Exercises

Key Takeaways

  • Measurement is the assignment of scores to individuals so that the scores represent some characteristic of the individuals. Psychological measurement can be achieved in a wide variety of ways, including self-report, behavioral, and physiological measures.
  • Psychological constructs such as intelligence, self-esteem, and depression are variables that are not directly observable because they represent behavioral tendencies or complex patterns of behavior and internal processes. An important goal of scientific research is to conceptually define psychological constructs in ways that accurately describe them.
  • For any conceptual definition of a construct, there will be many different operational definitions or ways of measuring it. The use of multiple operational definitions, or converging operations, is a common strategy in psychological research.
  • Variables can be measured at four different levels—nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio—that communicate increasing amounts of quantitative information. The level of measurement affects the kinds of statistics you can use and conclusions you can draw from your data.
  • Psychological researchers do not simply assume that their measures work. Instead, they conduct research to show that they work. If they cannot show that they work, they stop using them.
  • There are two distinct criteria by which researchers evaluate their measures: reliability and validity. Reliability is consistency across time (test-retest reliability), across items (internal consistency), and across researchers (interrater reliability). Validity is the extent to which the scores actually represent the variable they are intended to.
  • Validity is a judgment based on various types of evidence. The relevant evidence includes the measure’s reliability, whether it covers the construct of interest, and whether the scores it produces are correlated with other variables they are expected to be correlated with and not correlated with variables that are conceptually distinct.
  • Good measurement begins with a clear conceptual definition of the construct to be measured. This is accomplished both by clear and detailed thinking and by a review of the research literature.
  • You often have the option of using an existing measure or creating a new measure. You should make this decision based on the availability of existing measures and their adequacy for your purposes.
  • Several simple steps can be taken in creating new measures and in implementing both existing and new measures that can help maximize reliability and validity.
  • Once you have used a measure, you should reevaluate its reliability and validity based on your new data. Remember that the assessment of reliability and validity is an ongoing process.

Exercises

  • Practice: Complete the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and compute your overall score.
  • Practice: Think of three operational definitions for sexual jealousy, decisiveness, and social anxiety. Consider the possibility of self-report, behavioral, and physiological measures. Be as precise as you can.
  • Practice: For each of the following variables, decide which level of measurement is being used.
    • A university instructor measures the time it takes her students to finish an exam by looking through the stack of exams at the end. She assigns the one on the bottom a score of 1, the one on top of that a 2, and so on.
    • A researcher accesses her participants’ medical records and counts the number of times they have seen a doctor in the past year.
    • Participants in a research study are asked whether they are right-handed or left-handed.
  • Practice: Ask several friends to complete the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Then assess its internal consistency by making a scatterplot to show the split-half correlation (even- vs. odd-numbered items). Compute the correlation coefficient too if you know how.
  • Discussion: Think back to the last college exam you took and think of the exam as a psychological measure. What construct do you think it was intended to measure? Comment on its face and content validity. What data could you collect to assess its reliability and criterion validity?
  • Practice: Write your own conceptual definition of self-confidence, irritability, and athleticism.
  • Practice: Choose a construct (sexual jealousy, self-confidence, etc.) and find two measures of that construct in the research literature. If you were conducting your own study, which one (if either) would you use and why?

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Copyright © 2019

                                by Rajiv S. Jhangiani, I-Chant A. Chiang, Carrie Cuttler, & Dana C. Leighton

            Research Methods in Psychology by Rajiv S. Jhangiani, I-Chant A. Chiang, Carrie Cuttler, & Dana C. Leighton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
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