Chapter 2 - Research Methods

Asking Questions
(+) Ideas for research in social psychology come from everywhere –personal experiences and observations, events and in the news, and other research.
1) Asking questions: Everyday experiences/observations bring about questions/ Events
Pavlo- studying digestion in dogs, noticed that the dogs begin to salivate before food came. How do you have a natural stimulus bring about another natural stimulus?

Searching the Literature
(+) Before pursuing a research idea, is important to see what research has already been done on that idea and related topic.
(+) Electronic databases provide access to a wealth of information, both in the psychology literature and more general sources.
2) Searching the literature: You do not want to duplicate efforts, and recreate the wheel. (Database used for Psyc ‘available to UD students’= Psyc Info.)

Hypotheses & Theories
(+) Formulating a hypothesis is a critical step toward planning and conducting research.
(+) Theories in social psychology are specific rather than comprehensive and generate research that can support or disconfirm them. They should be revised and improved as a result of the research they inspire.
3) Developing hypotheses and theories
If you have isolated outcomes, theories bring it all together.

Basic & Applied Research
(+) The goal of basic research is to increase understanding of human behavior.
(+) The goal of applied research is to increase understanding of real-world events and contribute to the solution of social problems.

Research whose goal is to increase the understanding of human behavior, often by testing hypotheses based on a theory.

Research whose goals are to enlarge the understanding of naturally occurring events and to find solutions to practical problems.

Research designed to measure the association between variables that are not manipulated by the researcher.

1) To evaluate psychological findings – making sense of content and evaluate findings/ methods people use to get to those findings.
2) To improve reasoning skillsBecome a better, more sophisticated consumer

(+) Researchers often must transform abstract, conceptual variables into specific operation definitions that indicate exactly how the variables are to be manipulated or measured.
hypothetical construct that is not tangible (example: various personality constructs, self esteem)

(+) Researchers often must transform abstract, conceptual variables into specific operation definitions that indicate exactly how the variables are to be manipulated or measured.
The specific procedures for manipulating or measuring a conceptual variable.

(+) Construct validity is the extent to which the operational definitions successfully manipulate or measure the conceptual variable to which they correspond.
The extent to which the measures used in a study measure the variables they were designed to measure and the manipulations in an experiment manipulate the variables they were designed to manipulate.

(+) In self-reports, participants indicate their thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions.
(+) Self-reports can be distorted by efforts to make a good impression as well as by the effects of the working and context of questions.
(+) In studies using the bogus pipeline technique, participants’ self-reports tend to be more accurate and less socially desirable when they are led to believe that a machine can tell whether or not they are telling the truth.
Bogus Pipeline Technique: A procedure in which research participants are (falsely) led to believe that their responses will be verified by an infallible lie-detector.

(+) In descriptive research, social psycholgist record how requently or typically people think, feel, or behave in particular ways.
(+) One form of desrtiptive research is observational research, in which researchers observe individuals systematically, often in natural settings.
Observational Studies - e.g. using hidden cameras and/or microphone. Whenever possible and legal it’s the best possible situation to use technology (ex. Video/audio) to have a record

(+) In archival research, researchers examine existing records and documents such as newspaper articles, diaries, and published crime statistics.
Archival Studies – examining existing records of past events and behaviors (crime reports, online databases, any information in public domain, court records)

(+) Interrater reliability, or the level of agreement among multiple observers of the same behavior, is important when measuring variables when using ovservation.
The degree to which different observers agree on their observations.

(+) To best ensure a sample that is representative of the braoder population, researchers should randomly select people from the population to be in the survey.
Surveys are easy to do, but hard to do right. You have to think about how to construct questions, provide response options, label anchors, wording effects, framing effects, order in which people encounter them, order or administration.

(+) Correlational research examines the associations between variables.
(+) A correlational coefficient is a measure of the strength and direction of the association between two variables.
A statistical measure of the strength and direction of the associations between two variables.

(+) Positive correlations indicate that as scores on one variable increase, scores on the other variable increase, and that as scores on one variable decrease, scores on the other decrease.
(+) Negative correlations indicate that as scores on one variabel increase, scores on the other decrease.

Range: -1.0 to +1.0
r= -1, perfect negative relation
example of a negative r: drinking in college and GPA
r= 0, no relation
example of a near zero r: hair length and GPA r= +1, perfect positive relation
example of a positive r: GPA and scores on SAT