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Planning your research: Theories, hypotheses, and potential pitfalls
1. Planning your research: Theories, hypotheses, and potential pitfalls
2. Types of research studies
Exploratory -looking for associations, describe phenomena to formulatetheory
Exploratory research is research into the unknown. It is used when you are
investigating something but really don't understand it all, or are
not completely sure what you are looking for
Confirmatory -based on a theory, test a specific hypothesis or reproduce
findings
Confirmatory research is where you have a pretty good idea what's going
on. That is, you have a theory (or several theories), and the objective of the
research is to find out if the theory is supported by the facts
Critical an outcome of the study resolves a competition between two or more
different theories
3. Research Questions (RQ)
What is RQ?RQ identifies the phenomenon (i.e. the process, object or entity) that the researcher
wants to investigate (Willig, 2008).
Three main types of RQ:
Causal RQ – Compares two or more phenomena and determines if a relationship
exists. Often called relationship research questions.
Example: Is there a relationship between a person's age and their favourite day of the
week?
Descriptive RQ – Seek to describe a phenomena and often study “how much”, “how
often”, or “what is the change”.
Example: How often do college-aged students use Twitter?
Comparative RQ – Aim to examine the difference between two or more groups in
relation to one or more variables. The questions often begin with “What is the
difference in...”.
Example: What is the difference in academic achievement of girls and boys?
4. Hypothesis
What is hypothesis?It is a general, but exact statement about reality:
formulated in scientific terms (not everyday terms);
can be tested either by logical analysis (theoretical hypothesis) or by
an empirical procedure (empirical hypothesis)
What is a good hypothesis?
A good hypothesis can be tested
5. What is the difference between RQ and H?
6. Hypotheses
Questions:1. Kind people are more successful than evil
people.
2. When Freud introduced the concept of
1. Is it a “good” or a “bad”
unconsciousness, he deliberately ignored the work hypothesis?
of earlier researchers.
3. In most of the cases discrepancy between
mutual expectations of spouses is the cause of
divorce.
4. People usually overestimate expected
satisfaction from revenge.
5. Caucasians are smarter than Chukchi.
6. Loneliness leads to sickness and earlier death.
7. In presence of beautiful women men lose their
mind.
2. Is it testable, and if yes,
how you would test it?
3. If it is not testable, what
can be changed to make it
testable?
7. First steps to your own research: group exercise - 15 mins for preparation-
First steps to your own research: group exercise- 15 mins for preparation
In groups of 4 choose any field of social psychology you are
interested in
State a research question
8. Hypotheses: group exercise - 15 mins for preparation-
Hypotheses: group exercise- 15 mins for preparationState one «good» and one «bad» hypothesis
Don’t tell your peers which H is a good/ bad one
Try to uncover which H of your peers is a good one, why?
9. Research ethics (APA)
Why do we need ethics?Violations against authorship / copyright:
Plagiarism;
Collusion (wrong authorship credit, ghostwriting);
Using products of other people’s work without permission.
Violations against scientific integrity:
Self-plagiarism;
Selective publication;
Data fabrication.
More on ethics: http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx
5 Psychology Experiments You Couldn't Do Today
10. Fraud in science
Fraud in science: NY Times «The Mind of a Con Man»http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapelsaudacious-academic-fraud.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2