Test: Methods of Enquiry in Psychology- 2 - Humanities/Arts MCQ

The three main types of measures developed and used by psychologists include behavioural observations, self-report responses, and physiological measures. Experimental is a method. Theories, hypotheses and tests are not types of measures.

Mean, median and mode represent the three types of central tendency that give us different values for our data. Motivation, cognition and behaviour are topics studied within psychology. Descriptive is the term for the types of statistics represented by the measures of central tendency and inferential is another type of statistic that allows us to make inferences. Numerical, evaluation, quantity and quality are distracter terms. Dispersion is the typical distance of responses from one another.

The final goal of the scientific enquiry is to bring out positive changes within the lives of individuals. Psychological research is conducted to resolve problems in various settings. thanks to these efforts the standard of lifetime of people could be a major concern of psychologists.

A study has a high level of external validity when there are no reasons to doubt that the effects obtained would occur again outside the research setting. We might, for example, question a study’s external validity if participants responded in a particular way because they knew that they were taking part in a psychological experiment. They might inadvertently behave in a way that either confirms or undermines what they believe to be the researcher’s hypothesis.
So we usually try to deal with these potential problems by: (a) not telling experimental participants about the hypotheses that we are investigating until after the experiment has finished; (b) informing participants that they are not being ‘tested’ as such; (c) telling them that the data they produce is confidential and will not be discussed with any third party; and (d) saying that they can withdraw from the experiment at any time (and they can ask that the data they generate be deleted at any time).

Outcome variables can be manipulated by changing the conditions for these different types of groups using an experimental method. Correlate is a statistical term, Validate and Generalise refer to validity of the research overall, and Attract is not a term used to refer to the manipulation of groups.

Quasi-experimental research involves the manipulation of an experimental variable without the random assignment of participants to conditions or orders of conditions. Among the important types are nonequivalent groups designs, pretest-posttest, and interrupted time-series designs.

Interpretive method emphasises understanding over explanation and prediction. It takes the stand that, visible of complex and variable nature of human behaviour and skill, its method of investigation should vary from the tactic of investigation of the physical world.

This is a very complex issue and depends on many factors, not least practical ones – including the amount of time, money and expertise that a researcher has. However, as a general principle, it is worth emphasising that no one method is universally superior. Part of any research psychologist’s role is to make judgements about the appropriateness of a method for investigating the issues at hand. Being a good researcher is not a question of whether you do experiments or surveys: it is more a matter of when and how you do them.

When researchers report and comment on behaviour, without attempting to quantify it, they are using a qualitative research method. This approach involves attempts to understand behaviour by doing more than merely converting evidence into numbers. Qualitative methods can include coding, grouping and collecting observations without assigning actual numbers to the observation.
To take an example of human behaviour, you probably take a qualitative approach to the friendliness of the people you meet. In other words, you probably judge people as relatively friendly or unfriendly, but you would be unlikely to come up with a number that expresses their friendliness quotient.

Experiments also involve at least one dependent variable (or DV). This is an outcome or measurement variable, and it is this variable that the experimenter is interested in observing and which provides them with data. Control is the basis of experimental design. It involves making different conditions identical in every respect except the treatment (i.e. the independent variable).
In a between-subjects experiment, this is achieved by a process of random assignment of participants to the different conditions. In a properly designed study, if there is a difference in results obtained from measuring the dependent variable for each experimental condition, and we have equated the conditions in all respects except the manipulation of the independent variable, then we can infer that the independent variable must be the source of this difference.