Psychological research: requirements for the organization and its stages
Classification of research methods
Characteristics of the main empirical methods of psychology
Mastery of methods for studying personality psychology is one of the necessary components of a lawyer’s professional activity. A lawyer must be able to identify, analyze and take into account the individual psychological characteristics of a person (witness, suspect, accused), the goals of their actions and actions, hidden motives of behavior. The choice of methods for studying the personality of subjects of various legal relations in the professional activity of a lawyer, as well as the adequacy of the methods themselves, largely depends on the goals that he faces and on the nature of the issues that require resolution.
What contributions did John Locke make to the development of science?
The emergence of the experimental direction was impossible without the influence of J. Locke, an English philosopher and researcher. According to Locke, knowledge is the result of personal experience. A person is capable of cognizing the world around him only through his senses. But the flow of internal processes cannot be known in this way. Internal experience helps to track individual processes, so it is impossible to study them comprehensively, to know the “soul”.
Locke built similar conclusions on the basis of empirical methods of psychological research: experiment and observation. To create a direction, he transformed them into introspection and subjective experiment aimed at internal phenomena. Consciousness for the empirical approach is an autonomous inner world. He is closed and obeys his own laws, does not contact the outside world.
Locke justified this understanding of the method of study with a dualistic approach. The separation of the spiritual and material allows us to consider a person separately from the rest of the world. Psychic phenomena are accessible only to people, and the philosophical basis of the teachings of dualists is based on this, highlighting them in a separate category, independent of the surrounding world.
Empirical and theoretical thinking
In the history of psychological knowledge, conceptual thinking has been divided into two categories .
Theoretical and empirical thinking are distinguished as two concepts opposed to each other.
The first type of thinking is aimed at identifying, recording and describing the results of sensory experience and is called empirical.
Another type of thinking works with the essence of subjects, hidden and inaccessible to the senses and the laws of development. This type is called theoretical.
Both empirical and theoretical thinking are based on a special type of abstraction and generalization . For the empirical level, this is a comparison of individual qualities of objects and the search for differences between them based on the identified qualities.
Those. First, formally similar features are identified, which can be assigned the status of “general”. Then they are separated from others, fixed using a word-concept. The result is knowledge based on external (visual) evidence .
Branches of science
The development of the industry occurred in parallel in several forms, differing, but not contradicting each other. These areas include:
- Associative - a section that considers the psyche as a set of spiritual phenomena. A complex mental process consists of elements that can be separated: sensations and ideas and associations. Personality is a complex connecting the spiritual and the physical, based on individual associations.
- Voluntarism is a branch that considers will as the result of an energy impulse combined into complexes of emotional experiences.
- Functional - a section that studies thinking. Researchers analyzed the functions of consciousness and their participation in the act of thinking. Thinking was considered as an autonomous process, independent of the surrounding reality.
- Gestalt psychology is a branch based on the idea of the integrity of mental processes. It is complex and multifaceted, but it is impossible to remove a single element from it.
- Structural - a section that examines mental structures through idealistic ideas. Idealists who adhere to the structural composition of the psyche determined behavioral characteristics not by the influence of the external environment, but by internal processes.
In modern empirics, this direction occupies a special niche due to its dualistic nature.
The experimental approach to describing the nature of the psyche has accumulated a sufficient base of research results, but cannot provide a scientific explanation for them.
Their use in practice is not prohibited, but researchers may refuse to take into account the results of such experiments.
Empirical Research in Psychology Diploma
Empirical research is the most important part of a diploma or course work in psychology (excluding purely theoretical work). It is the results of the study (identified relationships or differences in indicators) that determine its essence.
The student is hardly expected to make any discoveries in the theoretical chapter: create a new theory, model, etc. - the task is too serious. But getting a new, original empirical result is a task that can be implemented in a diploma, master’s thesis, or even coursework.
For example, the thesis topic: “The relationship between self-esteem and stress resistance” was studied many times on various subjects. But you can always find a sample in which such studies have not been conducted. For example, pharmacy employees, or teachers with more than 20 years of experience, or women who are interested in sewing, etc.
Real or fictional
Conducting empirical research is a labor-intensive process. It is necessary to select psychodiagnostic methods, find subjects (form a sample), conduct testing of the subjects and process the data using keys in order to enter the results into the source data table. Not all psychology students have enough time and energy for this. In such a situation, it is tempting to make up results. Let's consider the pros and cons of this solution.
In a real empirical study, we test subjects, process the test results by keys and enter them into a summary table of test results (source data table). Then we process this table with statistical programs and obtain the results of a correlation analysis or the result of an analysis of differences. Based on the results of statistical calculations, we draw conclusions about the relationship between indicators, or about differences in indicators in groups of subjects.
Really conducting research is a fascinating process. Always curious what the result will be. However, there are situations when a psychology student, for some reason, cannot conduct real empirical research. In this case, the results of the empirical study will have to be invented.
The invented research assumes the reverse sequence of actions. We first come up with conclusions, and then, based on them, we form a table of testing results (a summary table of results), which, when statistically processed, gives the results and conclusions we need (formulated in advance).
Formally, from the point of view of the final result, works based on real data and invented ones are practically the same - in both applications there is a table of initial data, according to which all statistical criteria are calculated. The only thing that will not happen if the study is invented is the protocols filled out by the subjects during testing.
A fictional study is not always simpler than a real one. There are topics with obvious results. For example, the topic “Study of the relationship between leadership style and personal characteristics of middle-level managers in the trading sector” makes it easy to come up with a result. Indeed, it will be intuitively clear what personality traits will correlate, for example, with an authoritarian leadership style - self-confidence, rigidity, aggressiveness, etc. And sociability, diplomacy, etc. will correlate with collegiality.
At the same time, there are topics with non-obvious results. For example, “Study of the psychological characteristics of IT employees with different professional experience.” It’s difficult to come up with an expected and intuitive result out of your head. Most likely, there are no similar studies already conducted by anyone. So in this case, a real study would be more convenient.
I always suggest that clients who order me work on psychology conduct real research. In this case, I prepare tests and process them according to keys, and the client conducts the actual testing (sends out tests by mail or distributes them personally to subjects, then enters the result into an Excel spreadsheet and sends it to me).
Honestly, the actual research is more interesting. When processing data, some kind of childish curiosity always awakens - what will happen there. In the PhD dissertations that I write, the research is always real.
Observation method
One of the empirical methods is the observation method. This method requires careful preparation and professionalism of the researcher, because observation is conducted of a person’s mental manifestations.
This ancient method of cognition in psychology appears in two forms - firstly, as introspection or introspection, and secondly, as external or objective observation.
The observation procedure, in general, consists of certain processes:
- setting goals and objectives for observation;
- choice of object, subject and situation;
- choosing a method for observation that ensures the collection of the necessary information;
- choosing a method for recording observed phenomena;
- processing of received information and its interpretation.
Observation becomes a method of scientific knowledge insofar as it is not limited only to recording facts, but formulates hypotheses in order to test them against new observations.
Types of observation can be different - short-term observation (slice), long-term observation, which can last several years (longitudinal observation).
It can be laboratory, taking place in artificial conditions, or natural, taking place in conditions familiar to humans.
There are included and non-included observations. With participant observation, both the observer and the observed are included in the activity, but the observed do not know anything about the observation being made.
Non-participant observation presupposes the distribution of roles - some become observed and know about it, others become observers.
The observation method can be structured, when the structure of the observed facts is strictly subdivided, and unstructured - in this case, observation occurs over the entire set of facts.
Continuous and selective observation. All behavioral reactions are recorded during continuous observation, while during selective observation the area of observation is limited.
Observation can also be direct and indirect. Direct observation is carried out by the person himself, who draws conclusions based on its results.
Vicarious observation is carried out by another person.
Any method has its advantages and disadvantages. The observation method is not without its drawbacks, which are as follows:
- the results of observation are quite strongly influenced by the attitudes, interests, personal characteristics, and psychological state of the observer;
- the observer's focus on confirming his hypothesis leads to large distortions in the perception of events;
- difficulty in interpreting the data obtained;
- observation requires a lot of time.
As for introspection (introspection), this is the first method of psychology that allows us to study the soul and psyche of a person.
Introspection is an individual’s internal observation of his own mental manifestations. In psychology, professional introspection is not only useful, but even necessary, and in order for a person to be able to reflect himself, this must be learned.
What is empirical research
Empirical research is one of the manifestations of empiricism - an attitude to the world that places practical experience at the forefront as a source of knowledge of the world. Opposed to empiricism is rationalism, which focuses on the ability of consciousness and reason to cognize the world.
A rationalist reflects, analyzes, compares, generalizes, and theoretically discovers something new. This is exactly the kind of work that researchers do in the humanities - philosophy, political science, cultural studies, philology, etc. Psychology students do the same when working on the first chapter of a course or dissertation. They study other people’s approaches, theoretical views, and based on this they create something new (if it works out, of course).
An empiricist is not inclined to think - he is a man of action and strives to try everything in practice, through experience. He experiments, tries and makes mistakes. This is the work of experimental physicists. Research psychologists who conduct empirical research are essentially doing the same thing - through experimental means they strive to obtain new knowledge about a person.
PROS AND CONS OF THE EXPERIMENT
Pros:
• the ability to study cause-and-effect relationships between events; • high objectivity, since the results of the experiment are the events that actually occurred; • the ability to check the effectiveness of marketing decisions, especially for new products (test marketing); • the ability to control the environment;
Minuses:
• a probabilistic statement about the strength and nature of the influence of a specific independent variable on the dependent variable; • uncertainty about the applicability of the experimental results to other environmental conditions; • the presence of a time lag (period of time) between the completion of the experiment and the adoption of marketing decisions; • difficulty in leveling the influence of extraneous factors; • high time and financial costs; • high level of risk.
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