Exploring Experimental Psychology
Principles of Research
2.1 Basic Concepts
Before we address where research questions in psychology come from—and what makes them more or less interesting—it is important to understand the kinds of questions that researchers in psychology typically ask. This requires a quick introduction to several basic concepts, many of which we will return to in more detail later in the book.
Variables
Research questions in psychology are about variables. A variable is a quantity or quality that varies across people or situations. For example, the height of the students in a psychology class is a variable because it varies from student to student. The sex of the students is also a variable as long as there are both male and female students in the class. A quantitative variable is a quantity, such as height, that is typically measured by assigning a number to each individual. Other examples of quantitative variables include people’s level of talkativeness, how depressed they are, and the number of siblings they have. A categorical variable is a quality, such as sex, and is typically measured by assigning a category label to each individual. Other examples include people’s nationality, their occupation, and whether they are receiving psychotherapy.
2.2 Generating Good Research Questions
Good research must begin with a good research question. Yet coming up with good research questions often seems difficult and stressful to many students, who assume they they the creativity or knowledge to come up with a good question or hypothesis. However, psychological research on creativity has shown that coming up with new ideas is a product of ordinary thinking strategies and persistence (Weisberg, 1993). This section covers some fairly simple strategies for finding general research ideas, turning those ideas into empirically testable research questions, and finally evaluating those questions in terms of how interesting they are and how feasible they would be to answer.
Finding Inspiration
Research questions often begin as more general research ideas—usually focusing on some behavior or psychological characteristic: talkativeness, academic achievement, intelligence, memory, depression, and so on. Before looking at how to turn such ideas into empirically testable research questions, it is worth looking at where such ideas come from in the first place. Three of the most common sources of inspiration are informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.
Informal observations include direct observations of our own and others’ behavior as well as secondhand observations from nonscientific sources such as newspapers, books, and so on. For example, you might notice that you always seem to be in the slowest moving line at the grocery store. Could it be that most people think the same thing? Or you might read in the local newspaper about people donating money and food to a local family whose house has burned down and begin to wonder about who makes such donations and why. Some of the most famous research in psychology has been inspired by informal observations. Stanley Milgram’s famous research on obedience, for example, was inspired in part by journalistic reports of the trials of accused Nazi war criminals—many of whom claimed that they were only obeying orders. This led him to wonder about the extent to which ordinary people will commit immoral acts simply because they are ordered to do so by an authority figure (Milgram, 1963).
Practical problems can also inspire research ideas, leading directly to applied research in such domains as law, health, education, and sports. Can human figure drawings help children remember details about being physically or sexually abused? How effective is psychotherapy for depression compared to drug therapy? To what extent do cell phones impair people’s driving ability? How can we teach children to read more efficiently? What is the best mental preparation for running a marathon?
Probably the most common inspiration for new research ideas, however, is previous research. Recall that science is a kind of large-scale collaboration in which many different researchers read and evaluate each other’s work and conduct new studies to build on it. New researchers can find inspiration by consulting with a more experienced researchers (e.g., students can consult a faculty member). But they can also find inspiration by picking up a copy of almost any professional journal and reading the titles and abstracts. The newest publications can be found in the library OR on the shelves right outside of Professor Anson's office, where you will find 100's (literally) of journals going back for the last 10 years or so. Come and browse them anytime! For example, in one typical issue of Psychological Science, you can find articles on the perception of shapes, anti-Semitism, police lineups, the meaning of death, second-language learning, people who seek negative emotional experiences, and many other topics. If you can narrow your interests down to a particular topic (e.g., memory) or domain (e.g., health care), you can also look through more specific journals, such as Memory Cognition or Health Psychology.
Generating Empirically Testable Research Questions
Once you have a research idea, you need to use it to generate an empirically testable research question or statement, which is usually expressed in terms of a relationship between at least two variables. How can you do this? If you have a particular behavior or psychological characteristic in mind, you can simply conceptualize it as a variable and ask how frequent or intense it is. How many words on average do people speak per day? How accurate are people's memories for observed events? Which studying method best prepareses someone for doing well on an exam?
One way to do this is to ask yourself the following series of more general questions and write down all the answers you can think of.
· What are some possible causes of the behavior or characteristic?
· What are some possible effects of the behavior or characteristic?
· What types of situations might elicit more or less of the behavior or characteristic?
In general, each answer you write down can be conceptualized as the second of a two-variable relationship (the first variable being the behavior, charasteristic, or situation in question). If you were interested in talkativeness, for example, it might occur to you that a possible cause of this characteristic is family size. Is there a relationship between family size and talkativeness? Or it might occur to you that people seem to be more talkative in same-sex groups than mixed-sex groups. Is there a difference in the average level of talkativeness of people in same-sex groups and people in mixed-sex groups? This approach should allow you to generate many different empirically testable questions about almost any behavior or psychological characteristic.
2.3 Evaluating Research Questions
Researchers usually generate many more research questions than they ever attempt to answer. This means they must have some way of evaluating the research questions they generate so that they can choose which ones to pursue. In this section, we consider two criteria for evaluating research questions: how interesting is it and how feasible (practical) is it to answer?
Interesting
How often do people tie their shoes? Do people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw? Are women more likely to wear makeup than men? Do people prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Although it would be a fairly simple matter to design a study and collect data to answer these questions, you probably would not want to because they are not interesting. We are not talking here about whether a research question is interesting to us personally but whether it is interesting to people more generally and, especially, to the scientific community. For example, a research question is interesting to the extent that we are unsure about the answer (or can make an educated guess about the answer based on already gained knowledge). There should be some reasonable chance that the answer to the question will be something that we did not already know. The question of whether women are more talkative than men is interesting because there are reasons to expect both answers. The existence of the stereotype itself suggests the answer could be yes, but the fact that women’s and men’s verbal abilities are fairly similar suggests the answer could be no. The question of whether people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw is not interesting because there is absolutely no reason to think that the answer could be anything other than a resounding yes. Another factor to consider when deciding whether a research question is interesting is whether its answer has important practical implications. 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.
Feasible (Practical)
A second important criterion for evaluating research questions is the feasibility of successfully answering them. There are many factors that affect feasibility, including time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants. Clearly, researchers need to take these factors into account so that they do not waste time and effort pursuing research that they cannot complete successfully.
Looking through a sample of professional journals in psychology will reveal many studies that are complicated and difficult to carry out, including longitudinal designs in which participants are tracked over many years, neuroimaging studies in which participants’ brain activity is measured, and complex studies involving several variables and complicated statistical analyses. Keep in mind also that research does not have to be complicated or difficult to produce interesting and important results. Looking through a sample of professional journals will also reveal studies that are relatively simple and easy to carry out—perhaps involving a convenience sample of college students and a paper-and-pencil or computer task.
A final point here is that it is generally good practice to use methods that have already been used successfully by other researchers. For example, if you want to manipulate people’s moods to make some of them happy, it would be a good idea to use one of the many approaches that have been used successfully by other researchers (e.g., paying them a compliment). This is good not only for the sake of feasibility—the approach is “tried and true”—but also because it provides greater continuity with previous research. This makes it easier to compare your results with those of other researchers and to understand the implications of their research for yours, and vice versa.
Key Takeaways
· Research ideas can come from a variety of sources, including informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.
· Research questions expressed in terms of variables and relationships between variables can be suggested by other researchers or generated by asking a series of more general questions about the behavior or psychological characteristic of interest.
· It is important to evaluate how interesting a research question is before designing a study and collecting data to answer it.
· It is also important to evaluate how feasible a research question will be to answer.
References from Chapter 2
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371–378.
Stanovich, K. E. (2010). How to think straight about psychology (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn Bacon.
Weisberg, R. W. (1993). Creativity: Beyond the myth of genius. New York, NY: Freeman.