The question, 'How do we know', is one of the most important questions we can ask.
Psychologists learn by performing reasearch of different types to learn about our mental processes and behavior
In this activity, you will explore some different types of research methods and what can be learned from them.
There are different ways to learn.
Scholars in some fields try to learn by reasoning about what ought to be true.
In sciences, including psychology, we learn by directly observing what we want to study.
This is called the 'empirical' approach. In psychology's case, we want to learn about behavior.
In science we share what we have observed.
To make this sharing work, we must record our observations objectively through careful measurement.
Measurement is the process of turning our observations into clear records that others can examine for themselves.
Usually we turn our observations into numbers.