Why should I conduct psychological
research?
• Four research goals
We use the scientific
method to meet four research goals:
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Description
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Explanation
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Prediction
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Change
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1. Description: The first step of any scientific investigation is to describe fully the phenomenon we're interested in. Therefore, the goal of descriptive research is to define, classify, or categorize events and their relationships in order to describe mental processes and behavior. This process is an essential first step in clinical psychology, as it often involves describing and classifying psychological problems or disorders.
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Example: Psychologists who are interested in depression might describe symptoms of helplessness, such as failure to initiate activities and pessimism regarding the future.
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2. Explanation: We understand an event or behavior when we can identify its cause(s). A first step in this process is to generate explanations for the cause of a problem or behavior. These explanations are developed on the basis of psychological theories and careful observations of clinical cases. These explanations serve as hypotheses that can be tested in careful empirical research.
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Example:A researcher might hypothesize a relationship between symptoms of depression and helplessness. One relationship might be: As level of depression increases, individuals exhibit symptoms of helplessness. Another factor, or variable, that may be related to helplessness concerns individuals' feelings that they are unable to do things successfully. The relationship might be as follows: The more people believe they can't do things successfully, the more likely they are to feel helpless.
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3. Prediction: Once events and behaviors have been described and an explanation of these problems, we may seek to predict when these events occur. Researchers use both correlational and experimental methods to test predictions about relationships involving mental processes and behaviors. Understanding involves more than description. Just because we observe a relationship between two variables, we can't say one causes the other. More formally, this is stated as "correlation does not imply causation." Researchers conduct experiments to identify causes of a phenomenon. Experiments are characterized by the high degree of control required of the scientific method. Thus, by conducting controlled experiments psychologists infer what causes a phenomenon.
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Example: We might test the relationship between unsuccessful performance and helplessness. We could ask some participants in an experiment to do problems that are unsolvable and ask other participants to do solvable problems. We might then ask participants to estimate their success on future problems, and whether they want to do additional problems. Suppose that participants who worked on unsolvable problems were more pessimistic about their future performance and less willing to do additional tasks than participants who completed solvable problems. Based on this experiment, we could infer that unsuccessful performance on a task causes individuals to become helpless (i.e., pessimistic and less willing to initiate new tasks).
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4. Change: Clinical psychologists work primarily with people who suffer from mental disorders, people are victims of violence and aggression, and people who are the victims of stereotypes and prejudices that affect how people live and function (to name but a few problems that are the focus of the work of clinical psychologists). Therefore, an important goal of clinical psychology research is to apply knowledge and research methods to change people's lives for the better.
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Example:Clinical psychologists who treat depressed people could encourage them to attempt tasks that can be mastered or easily achieved; research evidence suggests this may decrease their helplessness and pessimism.
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