Hello, the topic we are discussing today is research methods in social psychology. The objectives of this module are, after reading this chapter you will be able to answer the following questions. What are the different research methods in social psychology?
What is archival research? And what is meta-analysis? The field of social psychology relies heavily on empirical research.
Empirical research is the systematic investigation of observable phenomenon in the world, for example, behaviors and events. Researchers try to collect collect information about behaviors and events in an accurate and unbiased form. This information, which may be either quantitative or qualitative, enables social psychologists to describe reality in detail and to develop theories about social behavior.
When conducting empirical research, investigators usually employ a methodology. Methodology is a set of systematic procedures that guide the collection and analysis of data. In a typical study, investigators first develop a research design and then they go into a laboratory or field setting and collect the data.
Next, they code and analyze the data to test the hypothesis and arrive at various conclusions about the behaviors or events under investigation. Throughout this process, investigators follow specific procedures to ensure the validity of the findings. When investigators report their research to the wider community of social psychologists, they describe not only the results but also the methodology they followed.
By reporting their methods, they make it possible for other investigators to independently verify their findings by replicating the study. Other investigators might wish to replicate the same study to see whether they can obtain the same findings in other settings with different human subjects. Through this process, investigators with differing perspectives can identify and eliminate biases in the original study.
If the results are replicable, they stand a better chance of being accepted by the other psychologists as reliable findings. Although there are many ways of collecting data about social behavior, most social psychological studies use one or another of four main methods. The four main methods used in social psychological studies are surveys, naturalistic observation, archival research and experiments.
Let us look at the first method of surveys. A survey is a procedure for collecting information by asking members of some population a survey a set of questions and recording their responses. The survey technique is very useful for identifying the average or typical response to a question as well as the distribution of responses within the population.
It is also useful for identifying how groups of respondents differ from one another. So, what is the purpose of a survey? Investigators often conduct surveys to obtain self-reports from individuals about their own attributes i.e. their attitudes, behaviours and experiences. Information of of this type enables investigators to discover the distribution of attributes in the population and to determine whether a relationship exists between two or more attributes of interest.
One form of survey is that the public opinion poll poll, which has become very common. Several organizations specialize in conducting surveys that measure the frequency and strength of favorable or unfavorable attitudes towards public issues, political figures and candidates for office. These polls play a significant role in politics in few countries because their findings increasingly influence public policy and the positions taken by political figures. also often used surveys to obtain data about various social problems. For instance, government agencies and individual researchers have conducted surveys on pregnancy and use of contraception among teenagers and on alcohol and drug abuse.
Information about the extent of such activities and the people involved in them is requisite to developing effective social policies. Finally, investigators often conduct surveys with the primary objective of making basic theoretical contributions to social psychology. For instance, many studies of socialization processes and outcomes like psychological well-being, discrimination and prejudice, attitude-behavior relationship and collective behavior have used survey method. There are two basic types of surveys based on interviews and questionnaires.
In an interview survey, a person serves as an interviewer and records the answers from the respondents. To ensure that each respondent in the study receives the same questions, the interviewer usually refers from an interview schedule. This interview schedule indicates the exact order and wording of questions in certain studies. However, the interviewer has the flexibility in determining the exact order and wording of the questions.
But he or she is expected to make sure that certain topics are covered. One advantage of using interview is that the interviewer can adjust the questioning to the response of the respondent. That is, he or she can look for verbal or non-verbal signs if the respondent does not understand a question and can repeat or clarify the question if needed.
In a questionnaire survey, the questions appear on a paper and the respondents read and answer them at their own pace. Therefore, no interviewer is present. But one advantage of questionnaires over interviews is that questionnaires cost less to administer. That is, the cost to conduct interviews is rather large as the interviewers need to be trained and however, surveys using questionnaire method are very cost effective.
The major disadvantage of questionnaires lies in the response rate, that is, the percentage of people contacted who actually complete the survey. Whereas an interview study can obtain response rates of 75 to 80% or more, mailed questionnaires rarely attain more than a 50% response rate. Because a high response rate is very desirable, this is a significant disadvantage for mailed questionnaires. A compromise between interviews and questionnaires is the telephone interview.
A telephone interview uses a trained interviewer to ask the questions but it sacrifices the visual feedback which is available in a face-to-face interview. This is the standard method used by public opinion polling organizations. It is cheaper than the face-to-face interview, although it typically involves a somewhat lower response rate.
The researcher ensures that the measures they use have reliability and validity. Now let us look at how questions are phrased in a questionnaire. The phrasing of questions used in surveys require close attention by the investigator.
Subtle differences in the form, wording, and context of the survey questions can produce major differences in responses. First, the more precise and focused a question is, the greater will be its reliability and validity. If a question is expressed in vague, ambiguous, abstract, or global terms, respondents may interpret it in different ways and this in turn will produce uncontrolled variations in responses.
A second consideration in formulating survey questions is that the exact choice of terms used. It is best to avoid jargon or specialized terminology unless one is interviewing a sample of specialists. Likewise, it is important to adjust questions to the educational and reading level of the respondents. A third consideration is the length of questions.
Several studies have shown that questions of moderate length elicit more complete answers than very short questions. A fourth consideration is whether the topic under investigation is potentially a threatening or an embarrassing one. In general, threatening questions which require quantified answers are better asked by presenting a range of alternative answers than by asking a question requiring an exact number.
Let us see how social psychologists measure attitudes. Perhaps the most common purpose of surveys is to measure people's attitudes towards some event, persons or objects. Because attitudes are mental states, they cannot be directly observed. The most direct way of finding out someone's attitude is to ask a direct question and record the person's answer. It is also the technique used by newspapers and television reporters.
To make the process more systematic, social psychologists use several methods including the single item measures, like Likert scales and semantic differential techniques. So, what are the strengths of surveys? Than observational studies, surveys can provide an accurate and precise description of the characteristics of a specific population at a very moderate cost. Using measures that are reliable and valid, employing a sampling design that guarantees representativeness and ensuring a high response rate, the survey can produce a clear portrait of the attitudes and social characteristics of a Surveys also has few weaknesses.
Both questionnaires and interviews rely on self-reports by respondents. Under certain conditions, however, self-reports can be invalid sources of information. First because some people may not respond truthfully to questions about themselves.
Secondly, even when the respondents want to report honestly, they may give wrong information due to imperfect recall or poor memory, especially in surveys investigating the past, for example, asking them about historical events or childhood memories. Third weakness is that some respondents answering self-report questions have a tendency to fall into a response set. That is, they answer all the questions in the same manner.
They may answer always agree or always disagree or they may give extreme answers very frequently. If many respondents adopt a response set, this will introduce bias into the survey's results. Observational research, often termed a field study, involves making systematic observations about behaviour as it occurs naturally in everyday settings. Typically, the data are collected by one or more researchers who directly observe the activity of the people and record the information.
Field studies have been used to investigate many forms of social behaviours in their natural settings For instance, researchers have observed and recorded data about social interaction between judges and lawyers in the court, teachers and students in the classroom, between couples in informal settings. Field studies are usually less intrusive than surveys or experiments. A field study involves nothing more intrusive than recording an observation about the behaviour of interest. Field study differs in how the observers collect and record information. In some studies, observers watch carefully while the phenomena of interest is occurring and then make notes about their observations from memory at a later point of time.
The advantage of recording afterwards is that the observer is less likely to arouse curiosity, suspicion or antagonism in the participants. In other studies, the observers may record field notes at the same time that they observe the behaviour. For instance, in research on police-citizen encounters, trained observers coded the interaction as it occurred.
Although taking notes in this manner could be potentially intrusive, it permits more details to be recorded and minimises any distortion by selective memory on the part of the investigator. In few other field studies, researchers make make audio or video recordings of interaction and then analyze the tapes later. The tape recordings may seem a superior alternative to the use of human observers, but this is not always the case.
The use of recordings minimizes the information obtained, but it can also influence the behavior of the participants if they discover that they are being taped. Let us look at participant observation. When the behavior of interest occurs in public settings such as restaurants, courtrooms or retail stores, researchers can simply go to the settings and observe the actions directly.
The researcher does not need to interact with the people being observed or reveal their identities. However, the behavior of interest is private or restricted in nature, observation becomes much more difficult. To investigate activities of this type, researchers occasionally use the technique of participant observation. In participant observation, members of the research team not only make systematic observations of others' behaviour, but also also interact with them and play an active role in the ongoing events.
Frequently, the fact of being an active participant enables the investigators to approach freely and observe the behavior that otherwise would have been inaccessible. In participant observation, researchers usually do not engage in overt coding or any other activate that would disrupt the normal flow of interaction among the observed group. In some instances, they may even need to use an assumed identity lest their true identity as investigators disrupt the interaction. Field studies sometimes use unobtrusive measures which are measurement techniques that do not intrude on the behavior under study and that avoid causing a reaction from the people whose behavior is being studied.
For example, some unobtrusive measures are used to measure the Unobtrusive measures rely on the physical evidence left behind by people after they have exited from the situation. One example is that the analysis of inventory records and bar bills to unobtrusively measure consumption patterns at various clubs and bars. Like any other research method, field studies have both strengths and weaknesses.
A major strength is that observational techniques allow researchers to study social activity in real-world settings. Careful observation can provide a wealth of information about behavior as it actually occurs in the natural settings. Weaknesses of field studies include their sensitivity to the specific recording methods used. Observations recorded after the fact are often less reliable and valid than those recorded on the spot or those based on audio and videotaping.
Furthermore, the validity of the observations may depend on the part of the identities that the investigators publicly project while making their observations. Validity may be destroyed if the researchers have been operating covertly and the subjects suddenly discover that they are being observed. In some cases, field investigators do not get informed consent from the people being observed prior to the collection of data.
Permission for using the data is sought only after the behaviour has been observed or the conversation has been tape recorded. Some people consider this as a serious drawback and object to the participant observation on ethical grounds. However, this concern has to be weighed against the fact that if the permission was sought in advance, the behaviour under investigation might never occur or might take a different form. Although social psychological researchers often prefer to collect original data, it is sometimes possible to test hypotheses and theories by using data that already existed. The term archival research denotes the actual data collected by the researchers.
acquisition and analysis of information collected previously by others. When archival data of suitable quality exists, a researcher may decide that analysing them is preferable to collecting and analysing new data. Archival research usually costs less than alternative methods. There are many sources of archival data like government agencies, insurance companies and Thanks. These typically entail overtime data with respect to various measures of financial and economic performances.
Another source of archival data is newspapers. Newspaper articles are rich source of information about past events. Let us look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of archival research. One significant advantage of archival research is comparatively low cost.
By reusing existing information, the investigator avoids the cost of collecting new data. A second advantage is that investigator may complete a study more quickly than conducting a new research altogether. Thirdly, an investigator can test hypothesis about phenomenon that occur over an extended period of time. But one major disadvantage of archival research is the lack of control over the type and quality of information. A investigator has no other choice but to but must work with whatever others have collected.
This may or may not include data on all variables the investigator wishes to study. Moreover, there may be doubts regarding the quality of the original research design or the procedures that have been followed for collecting the data. Another disadvantage is that some sets of records contain large amounts of inconsistent or missing information. Obviously, this will hinder the study. and limit the validity of any findings.
The experiment is most highly controlled method of research methodologies available to social psychologists. And it is a powerful method for establishing causality between variables. For a study to be a true experiment, it must have two specific characteristics.
The researcher must manipulate one or more of the independent variables that are hypothesized to have a causal impact on the dependent variable of concern. The researcher must assign the participants randomly to the various treatments that is to different levels of each independent variable. Random assignment is desirable because it mitigates the effect of extraneous variables.
Thus, random assignment enables the investigator to infer that any observed differences between the groups on the dependent variable are only due to the effect of independent variable and not due to extraneous variables. What is the difference between laboratory and field experiments? It is useful to distinguish because laboratory experiments are those conducted in a laboratory setting, where the investigator can control much of the participant's physical surroundings. This control enables the experimenter to measure and manipulate the independent variables.
Field experiments, in contrast, with laboratory experiments are studies where investigators manipulate variables in natural and non-laboratory settings. Usually, these settings are already familiar to the participants. So, compared with laboratory experiments, field experiments have a high advantage of external validity. When conducted in natural and uncontrived settings, they usually have a greater mundane realism than laboratory experiments. Moreover, the participants in the field experiments may not be particularly conscious for their status as experimental subjects, a fact that reduces participants' reactivity.
The primary weakness of field experiments, of course, is that in natural settings, experimenters sometimes have difficulty manipulating independent variables exactly as they wish and often have little control over extraneous variables. This means that the internal validity of field experiments is often lower when compared with laboratory experiments. However, the strength of experimental studies lies in the high level of internal validity.
This makes experiments especially well suited for testing causal hypothesis. Field experiments, however, often surpass laboratory experiments with respect to external validity. Experiments have been used to test many causal hypotheses drawn from social exchange theory and cognitive theory.
Hundreds of experiments have been conducted in an effort to identify the cause of racial and ethnic prejudice. One weakness of experimentation is that, investigators cannot study many social phenomenon by this method. often they lack the capacity to manipulate the independent variables of interest or to implement random assignment.
Numerous ethical, financial, and practical considerations in everyday life restrict what investigators can manipulate experimentally. At various times, one would have probably noticed that some events appear to be related to the occurrence of others. That is, as one event changes, there would be a change in other event too.
For example, when interest rates rise, the stock market often falls. When two events such as these are related in this way, they are said to be correlated or that a correlation exists between them. The term correlation refers to a tendency for one event to change the other event changes.
When a correlation exists, it is possible to predict one variable from the information that we gather about other variables. Using correlational method, social psychologists make careful observations of each variable and then perform appropriate statistics to determine whether and to what extent the other variables are related to each other. For example, To find out if there is a relationship between good mood and helping behaviour, researchers collect data from participants using questionnaires that assess their mood fluctuations and how many times they are helpful to others every day and how many times do they do a favour or make a donation and based on the results they determine the relationship between good mood and helping behaviour. However, This method only determines the relationship and not the cause and effect between the variables.
Despite this drawback, this method has been useful in natural settings as a large amount of information can be obtained in a relatively short period of time. Social psychologists have conducted empirical research for almost a century. There have been dozens and sometimes hundreds of studies on a particular phenomena.
Unfortunately, the results of different studies on a specific question do not always agree and have different perspectives. For instance, some studies show that contact with members of a group produces more positive attitudes. Few studies say that it produces more prejudice. Other studies may say that the contact has no effect on attitudes.
What can we do in such a situation? Meta-analysis is a statistical technique that allows researcher to combine the results from all previous studies on a question to determine conclusively as to what they are saying. The researcher locates all previous studies on the question using computerized searches of libraries and databases.
Then, the investigator applies statistics that measure how big the difference is between the results and averages the final results result over all the studies that were located. Finally, let us look at research in diverse populations. For much of the 20th century, the participants in research by social psychologists were often Americans, middle class and college students. In the past 25 years, there has been an increasing interest studying racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States and members of other cultures around the world.
While conducting research on diverse groups one should take into account the cultural history and present socio-economic circumstances of that particular group. The measures that will be used must be linguistically equivalent that is questions or words have to be worded so that they are understood in the same way by all the participants. If the participants speak a different primary language from that of the instrument a careful process of translation should be employed to produce equivalent instruments.
And also measures should be standardized or interpreted using data from the populations that are being studied.