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Developing Ideas for Research in Psychology

Varieties of Psychological Research

Basic vs. Applied Research

• Basic – designed to understand fundamental psychological

phenomena

– E.g. stimulus factors affecting selective attention

• Applied – designed to shed light on the solution to real-world

problems

– E.g. effect of cell phone use on driving

Time Dimension in Research

• Cross-Sectional Research

• Longitudinal Research

– Time-Series Study

– Panel Study

– Cohort Study

• Case Studies

Cross-Sectional Research • Collect data at one specific point of time

– E.g. prevalence of a problem (obesity, schizophrenia etc)

• may support inferences of cause and effect

Longitudinal Research

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• Examine features of people or other units at more than one time

– Time-Series Study

– Panel Study

– Cohort Study

Time-Series Study (observe different people at multiple times)

• Gather the same type of info across two or more time periods

– To observe stability or change of the subjects

– To track conditions over time

– E.g. the transformation of advance technology

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Panel Study

• Observe the exact same people at two or more times

• E.g. twin studies

– Before and after parenting for 10 years

Cohort Study

• Similar to panel study, but

• it focuses on a category of people who share a similar life experience in a specified time period

• E.g. divorce rate at different years

Case Study • Examine one or a handful of cases over a duration of

time

• Usually qualitative data

• Examine numerous diverse cases more in depth

Review the Scholarly Literature & Planning a Study

• Start with a general topic

• Narrow the topic into a specific research question

• Design a specific study to address the research question

Often begin with curiosity

Hold deep commitment/ strong feelings

Believe is wrong & want to change

3 most effective type of study to pursue for a topic or question

Reading studies that others have conducted

on a topic

Grasping issues within qualitative & quantitative approaches to

research design

Understanding how to use research techniques as well as their strengths & weaknesses

Literature Review • 5 important functions of reading the “literature” or

studies

– Narrow down a topic study design, variable measurement & ways to analyse data

– Inform you the “state of knowledge” consider replicating, testing or extending what others already found

– Stimulating creativity & curiosity

– Develop skills to evaluate studies

– Improve writing skills

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Where to Find Research Literature

• Periodicals

• Scholarly journals - OPAC

– Citation

– Abstracts

• Citation Formats

• Books

• Dissertations

• Government documents

• Policy reports and presented papers

How to Conduct a Systematic Literature Review - OPAC

• Define and refine topic

• Design search

• Locate research reports

– Articles in Scholarly Journals

– Social Sciences Index • Sociological Abstracts

• Keyword

• Taking Notes

– Organize notes

Writing the Review

• Requires planning and good, clear writing

• Read articles/literature critically

– Skepticism

• Skills

• Reading journal articles

– Is the introduction and title really fit with the rest of the article

• Can be misleading sometimes

What a Good Review Looks Like

• The wrong way: • To list a series of research reports with a summary of the findings of

each

• The right way: – To organize common findings or argument together

• A well-accepted approach: – Address the most important ideas first, to logically link

statements or findings, and to note discrepancies or weaknesses in the research.

Qualitative & Quantitative Research Orientations

Approach to Data: Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

• Quantitative – Includes quantitative data and statistical analysis

– Experiments

– Surveys

– Content analyses

– Existing statistics

– Linear research path (follow a fixed sequence of steps)

• Qualitative – Includes narrative descriptions, content analyses, interviews

– Field research – open-ended or informal interviews

– Nonlinear research path

– Historical-comparative research

• Much research includes elements of both – example gender differences in use of the TV remote

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Preplanned & Emergent Research Questions

• It is important to start your thinking about the research with a question rather than simply a topic heading.

• Creating a research question is a task. Good research questions are formed and worked on, and are rarely simply found. You start with what interests you, & you refine it until it is workable.

• Ask: what interests you??!!

• Whatever you may think at the start of a study, it could differ after you do the study and examine its empirical evidence

Characteristics of a good research question

• Focuses on only 2 or 3 variables.

• Is defined with respect to current knowledge.

• Can be investigated within available time/resources/ ethical constraints.

• Can use comparative terms (e.g. "faster", "higher“ etc).

• Must use clear concepts.

• Include cause and effect relationships

• Answerable: Quantitative & Qualitative approach

• Bad research questions examples.

– How do people become aggressive?

– How to improve well-being?

– Why females are more depressed than male?

– Why has my friends been unemployed for the past 12 months?

– What causes divorce?

– Why is there crime?

Better research questions

• Is age at marriage associated with divorce?

• Is there the difference between gender in perceiving marriage?

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Quantitative • Focus research question for

a specific study in different ways

• Plan on steps before finalising the study design

• The research question will guide the design of a study before any data collection

Qualitative • Start with semi-focused,

broad research questions

• Flexible

• Encourages slowly focusing topic throughout the study

• Narrowing or redirection in the focus occurs after data collection

Quantitative • When starting research on a

topic, ask: – What is it about the topic that

is of greatest interest?

• If you know little about certain topic, get background knowledge by reading about it

Qualitative • Sharpen the research

questions

• During the study, you rarely know the issues or questions until you are immersed in the data

• Interpretation of data

• Remain open to unanticipated data

• Be prepared to change direction of research

• The Role of Research Question

– The relationship among a small number of variables

– Identify a limited number of variables and specify the relationship among them

Typical research questions for qualitative research

• How did a certain condition or social situation originate?

• How is the condition/situation maintained over time?

• What are the processed by which a condition/situation changes, develops, or operates?

– You may discover new ideas based on your data collected and interpretation of data

Specify the universe

• What is your research samples? Population?

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Techniques for Narrowing a Topic into a Research Question

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Limitations to research

– Time, cost, access, approval, ethics, expertise

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Quantitative Research vs Qualitative Research

Qualitative Design Issues

The Language of Cases and Contexts

• To examine social processes

• Focus in interpretations

• E.g. how people create social understandings and meaning in specific settings

• See social life from multiple points of view

• Rarely use variables to test hypotheses, or try to convert social life into numbers

• Examine motifs, themes, distinctions & ideas instead of variables

• Document real events

• Recording of what people say (with words, gestures, tone)

• Observations of specific behaviour

• Studies of written document

• Examinations of visual images

Ground Theory

• Inductive approach

– Develop theory during & after the data collection

• It makes qualitative approach more flexible and let data and theory interact

• May change direction of research focus

– May abandon the original research questions in the middle of the process

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The Context is critical

• Emphasise the social context for understanding thoughts and actions

– The same events/bahaviours might have different meanings in different cultures and historical eras

– E.g. what does voting mean in the context?

– how does skinny/chubby define in the context?

The case and process

• Typically measure variables of hypotheses across many cases

– E.g. 450 individuals (participants), each individual is a case or unit

• Data – narrative story about particular people or events

• Data is rich and detail

Interpretation • Assign meaning by rearranging, examining and

discussing textual or visual data

• First-order interpretation • Viewpoint of the people that are being studied

• Second-order interpretation • Researcher’s own viewpoint

• Third-order interpretation • The connections a researcher makes between the detailed understanding

of specific people or events and abstract concepts, generalizations, or theories used to analyse data

Quantitative Design Issues

The Language of Variables and Hypotheses

• Variable – a central idea in quantitative research

– Gender

– Marital status

– Income

– A person’s attitude towards abortions etc

– Type of crime committed

• Attributes – the values or the categories of a variable

– Male ≠ variable; = it describes a category of gender & is an attribute of the variable of “gender”

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Types of Variables • Independent variable (IV)

– The cause variable, or the one identifies forces or conditions that act on something else

• Dependent variable (DV) – The effect, result, or outcome of another variable

– “depending on” the cause

– Variables are what you wish to explain

• Intervening variable – mechanisms to explain the relationship between an IV and

a DV

• An intervening variable facilitates a better understanding of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables when the variables appear to not have a definite connection.

• Study higher CGPA (Motivation)

• Marital status committing suicide (social attachment)

• Violence on tv violence behaviour (learning)

• Family disruption low self esteem on children depression, poor grades in school job prospects adult income

Causal Theory and Hypotheses

• Hypothesis

– A proposition to test

– A tentative statement that 2 variables are casually related

• Characteristics of casual hypothesis

At least 2 variables Expresses a cause-effect relationship

Can be expressed as a prediction/future

outcome

Logical link between research and theory

Testable & measurable by the

proposed experiments

Gives insight into the research question

Testing & Refining Hypotheses

• Knowledge come from testing hypotheses repeatedly by the sceptical scientists

– To strengthen the confidence level in a causal linkage in the theory

• Each hypothesis – explanation of DV

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2 types of hypotheses

• Null hypothesis

– A denial of an attribute, an existence, a difference or an effect or relationship expressed in negative statement

– E.g. there is NO significant relationship between marital status and emotional intelligence

• Alternative hypothesis

– Affirms the existence of a phenomenon, acceptance of the relationship, effect, and difference.

– E.g. there is a significant relationship between marital status and emotional intelligence.

Errors in explanation • Ecological fallacy

– The empirical observations are at too HIGH a level for the

causal relationship that is stated

– Malaysia has a high crime rate. Jenny is living in Malaysia. So Jenny probably stole the watch.

• Reductionism – The empirical observations are at too LOW a level for the

causal relationship that is stated

– Because Alan lost his job and did not buy a new car, the country entered a long economic recession

Errors in explanation

• Spuriousness

– An unseen third variable is the actual cause of both the IV and DV

– Hair length is associated with TV programme. People with short hair prefer to watch football and wrestling. People with long hair prefer to watch romance drama. (Unseen variable: gender)

From the research question to hypotheses

• Good research question contains hints on hypotheses

• Research question: is age a t marriage associated with divorce?

• Ask: what is the IV & DV?

what is the direction of relationship?

• Hypothesis: the lower the age at time of marriage, the greater the chances that the marriage will end in divorce

• Research question: are couple who marry younger more likely to divorce?

Developing a hypothesis from a research question:

• A hypothesis predicts the nature and direction of the relationship between two or more variables.

• A good research question should lead almost directly to at a single hypothesis.

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• You can develop several hypotheses for one research question

– The smaller the difference between the ages of the marriage partners at the time of marriage, the less likely that the marriage will end in divorce

• Hypotheses can specify that a relationship will hold up under some conditions but not others

– The lower the age of the partners at time of marriage, the greater the chances that the marriage will end in divorce, unless it is a marriage between two members of a tightly knit traditional religious community in which early marriage is the norm.

Where do Research Ideas Come From?

Where do Research Ideas Come From?

• our own observations & serendipity

– sometimes from serendipitous (unexpected) events

• psychological theories

• existing research

– development of research teams & the question of “what’s next?”

Developing research from observations & serendipity

• From observations

– E.g. Helping behavior or bystander effect (e.g., following Kitty Genovese murder)

• From serendipitous events

– Discovering something when looking for something else

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Scientific Theory Construction & Testing

• Theories are proposed explanations for the causes of phenomena.

– Theories attempt to explain the who, what, when, where, how, and why of people’s behavior and mental processes.

– A theory is a logically organized set of statements that • define events (concepts),

• describe relationships among these events, &

• explain the occurrence of these events.

Psychological Theories

– Theories vary in their scope and complexity.

– Successful theories

• organize what we know about a behavior or mental process (empirical knowledge),

• guide future research by suggesting testable hypotheses, &

• survive rigorous testing (such as falsification).

– Good theories are logical & internally consistent, precise, & parsimonious.

Theory never becomes fact; instead, theory serves to explain facts

Developing Research from Theory

The Nature of Theory

Summarises existing empirical knowledge of the phenomenon

Organises this knowledge in the form of precise statements of relationship among variables

Proposes an explanation for the phenomenon

provides basis for predictions about behavior

Developing Research from Theory

The Nature of Social Learning Theory

Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment

Observing + watching = behaviour imitated

Children’s violence behaviour created from observing the social world

Domestic violence, smoking behaviour, fashion etc

Developing Research from Other Research

• Usually the conclusion of one project invariably leads to the beginning of another because while experiment answers some research questions, they also typically raise new ones

• Bandura’s experiments

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Begin reading published research, while & after reading, be thinking in “what’s next?” terms.

Tips of generating research ideas from reading published research/journals

1. Read the suggestion of future direction in the discussion session is it testable?

2. Read the explanation of results is this explanation testable with some other explanation in your study?

3. The general conclusion of a research is the conclusion applicable to another type of person (e.g. introverts or extroverts)

4. Could the study extend the findings to another age group, SES, or culture?

5. Could the research procedures be adapted for another kind of research problems?

Replication and Extension

• Exact replication rare

– Because researchers are seldom rewarded for simply repeating what someone else has done.

– Yet, it occurs when serious questions are raised about the findings

• Extension partial replication, with new features added to extend the findings

– Use different variables, different populations, different procedures, different data collections method, etc

• Do not forget about creative thinking while generating your research idea

• Creative thinking – recognise meaningful connections between apparently unrelated ideas – see those “connections” as the key to develop ideas