Chapter 4 Practical Issues in Planning Your Research

1. Chapter 4Practical Issues in Planning Your Research

2. Practical Questions in Planning Research • Simplifying complex questions to generate a manageable research question • Deciding the nature of the variables you want to investigate

3. Understanding Your Research • Finding published research relating to your research question through a literature search • Deciding how you will measure your variables • Understanding the nature of the participants to be tested in the research

4. Conducting Your Study • Deciding on the type of research • Descriptive • Survey • Correlational • Experimental • Evaluating ethical issues of your research • Determining the Research Setting • Laboratory (often theoretical) • Natural environment (often applied)

5. Choosing Your Methodology

6. Choosing Your Methodology • Selecting Research Materials and Procedures • To what materials will you expose your participants? • What materials have other researchers used? • Finding materials and methods other researchers have used will save time in planning a new project • It is appropriate to use others’ materials as long as you cite them properly and attribute their work to them

7. Choosing Your Methodology

8. Choosing Participants or Subjects • Identifying possible participants • Population—The entire set of people or data that are of interest to the researcher • Sample—A subset of the population that actually takes part in the research • Representative sample—A subset of the population that resembles the entire population so that results from that sample can be applied to the entire population

9. Choosing Participants or Subjects • Deciding how many participants to include • Too large a sample is costly • Too small a sample can miss important results • Issues • With highly variable behavior, you need larger samples • With heterogeneous populations, you need larger samples • With small experimental effects, you need larger samples

10. Controversy: Comparing Animal and Human Stress • Can you generalize from animals to people? • Researchers have used experimental stress to induce learned helplessness in animals • Animals who are stressed may not show typical patterns of conditioning • People who experience similar stress show similar patterns of behavior as animals • Sometimes animal behavior is a good predictor of human behavior • Researchers need to be aware of the limitations in their ability to generalize from animals to people

11. Differing Approaches in Different Areas of Psychology • Different approaches in different journals • Theoretical research journals • Report laboratory research much of the time • Rely on experimental approaches • Feature college students as participants • Applied research journals often report • Report on laboratory research much of the time • Rely on non-experimental approaches • Feature people in the working world as participants

12. Differing Approaches in Different Areas of Psychology Making choices in your research design • Choices are based on practicalities • How limited is your time, energy, and money? • Can you manipulate an environment (laboratory or applied) to your desire? • How simple a research setting make sense for your research