Fundamental Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology
We study research methods and statistics in order to benefit from the science of psychology – to qualify as a psychologist, to use psychological knowledge in other fields, or simply to apply psychology to issues that crop up in everyday life. Imagine that your employer requires you to sit an intelligence test before you can be considered for higher duties in your organization. You sit the test and are told that your IQ score is 110. What does this mean? Your immediate future may depend on this number, but you can only understand it if you know something about intelligence testing (see chapter 13) and standard scores. Similarly, newspapers and other sources are full of reports relating to research on psychological issues. Many draw alarming conclusions – often because they mistakenly assume that correlation is the same as causation (see below). A good knowledge of psychological research methods allows you to avoid making the mistakes that journalists, politicians and many others make because they lack the necessary scientific understanding. Another consideration is that, in most countries, in order to become a psychologist you need to be not just an informed consumer of psychological research but also a producer of it. In other words, you need to conduct a piece (or several pieces) of research. Imagine you were employed by a school to determine whether its students are more or less intelligent than students at another school, or in an average school. You would not be able to answer this question properly without conducting a wellplanned piece of psychological research. Even if you do not go on to further study, the ability to conduct, analyse and evaluate psychological research is a very marketable skill that is central to a large number of occupations, such as marketing, management or policy making. Finally, the intellectual challenges explored in this chapter can be stimulating and interesting in themselves. They are not inconsiderable, but if you can master them you will be better equipped to understand psychology as a whole. This is not because studying methodology and statistics is an end itself (though it can be), but because it is a tool that allows you to get more (personally, intellectually and scientifically) from doing psychology.
We study research methods and statistics in order to benefit from the science of psychology – to qualify as a psychologist, to use psychological knowledge in other fields, or simply to apply psychology to issues that crop up in everyday life. Imagine that your employer requires you to sit an intelligence test before you can be considered for higher duties in your organization. You sit the test and are told that your IQ score is 110. What does this mean? Your immediate future may depend on this number, but you can only understand it if you know something about intelligence testing (see chapter 13) and standard scores. Similarly, newspapers and other sources are full of reports relating to research on psychological issues. Many draw alarming conclusions – often because they mistakenly assume that correlation is the same as causation (see below). A good knowledge of psychological research methods allows you to avoid making the mistakes that journalists, politicians and many others make because they lack the necessary scientific understanding. Another consideration is that, in most countries, in order to become a psychologist you need to be not just an informed consumer of psychological research but also a producer of it. In other words, you need to conduct a piece (or several pieces) of research. Imagine you were employed by a school to determine whether its students are more or less intelligent than students at another school, or in an average school. You would not be able to answer this question properly without conducting a wellplanned piece of psychological research. Even if you do not go on to further study, the ability to conduct, analyse and evaluate psychological research is a very marketable skill that is central to a large number of occupations, such as marketing, management or policy making. Finally, the intellectual challenges explored in this chapter can be stimulating and interesting in themselves. They are not inconsiderable, but if you can master them you will be better equipped to understand psychology as a whole. This is not because studying methodology and statistics is an end itself (though it can be), but because it is a tool that allows you to get more (personally, intellectually and scientifically) from doing psychology.
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