Chapter 1. Introducing Psychological Research

1.1 Making the Most of This Handbook

If you are an undergraduate looking through this book for the first time, chances are that you are just starting to be involved in psychological research. Perhaps you have just declared psychology as your major, and you are taking the first of a series of research courses (and possibly wondering why you need to learn about statistics and scientific research when all you want to do is help people!). Or, maybe you have heard that getting some research experience will give you an edge for getting into graduate school, and so you are serving as a research assistant for a faculty member or graduate student who recommended (or assigned) this book to you.

You will find that this book is unique in several respects. First, this book is modular, which means that each section can be read on its own independent of the other parts of the book. Second, this book is a blend of a traditional research methods textbook and a reference book. Some modules in the book are structured like a traditional textbook and give you an overview of the process of doing scientific research in psychology. The first time you use this book, you will probably read these sections all the way through to gain an understanding of why and how we do research in psychology, and an appreciation of your role in this process as an undergraduate psychology student. These sections will also help you to understand when and why to choose one particular research design over another, or one particular statistical analysis strategy for your data. The remaining sections of the book are structured more like a reference book, so that as you become more familiar with the research process, you can easily find specific information that you need for particular projects or more advanced classes. Specifically, these sections will catalog the various types of research design, the various statistical analyses that you can use with quantitative data, and information about the rules and formatting of research reports according to the American Psychological Association.

This book is designed to be an indispensable resource for undergraduate psychology majors, and is the kind of book that you will want to keep with you throughout the major (and quite possibly beyond graduation). It covers the basics for the novice researcher, but it also covers advanced techniques in sufficient detail to make it useful in more advanced classes. It is also designed to encourage critical thinking, so you will always consider the question of why we use a particular technique, not just how to use it. The book also presents multiple aspects of controversial issues in psychological research so that you can think about them and form your own opinions about them. There is a special emphasis throughout the book on ethics, and the factors you must consider when designing, running, analyzing, and writing about your research as a responsible and principled researcher. It is my sincere hope that you will fall in love with psychological research (as I did), but at the very least, I hope that you gain an appreciation for what researchers do and why they do it, and develop a set of skills that will serve you well no matter what your future holds.

At the beginning of each remaining section (Sections 2 through 6) of this book, you will see a diagram that tells you what step of the research project that section covers and which modules to read depending on your specific situation. These diagrams should be very helpful to you when you want to use this book as a reference.

1.2 Understanding What Is Psychological Research

If you are like most students, you probably were a bit surprised in your introductory psychology classes to learn how much science is emphasized in the discipline of psychology. Outside the discipline, psychology is often defined primarily in terms of psychotherapy rather than research. The psychology section of your local bookstore typically is filled with self-help books that describe how to deal with problems, and popular media figures such as Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura also provide this sort of advice to the public. If you have chosen to major in psychology, you may have done so because you want to become a counselor or therapist. For all these reasons, it can be a bit puzzling to see that the typical undergraduate psychology major curriculum includes required courses such as statistics and research methods, and does not usually require courses in counseling or clinical psychology (these are usually electives). The undergraduate psychology major emphasizes science over counseling for several reasons. Just as a medical doctor cannot treat patients without having a solid background in anatomy and physiology and understanding the nature of diseases and disorders, a clinician cannot treat patients without a solid background in research on how people think, feel, and behave. Also, just as in medicine, there are two branches of psychology, research and practice. Some medical doctors go into practice and see patients or perform surgery, while other medical doctors go into research to learn more about diseases and disorders in the hopes of finding a cure. Likewise, some psychologists go into practice as psychotherapists or clinicians, while others pursue research full-time to learn more about human behavior. From a practical perspective, most of the full-time faculty members in psychology departments at colleges and universities are researchers rather than clinicians, so it is understandable that the program at most schools emphasizes research over practice. Also, it is not possible in most states to be licensed to practice psychotherapy without a doctoral degree in clinical or counseling psychology. If you are much more interested in counseling than in research, and you are really apprehensive about having to spend the next ten years or so in school before you can do counseling, you might want to consider a major in social work. Because social work emphasizes practice so strongly, even in the undergraduate major, you can become a licensed counselor and open your own private practice in most cases with only a masters degree in social work. However, before you decide whether to stick with psychology as a major or switch to something else, you should read the remainder of this module which describes the advantages of conducting psychological research and of understanding human behavior from a scientific perspective. Hopefully, you will gain a better understanding of why so many psychologists have chosen to devote their careers to psychological research, and why no matter what you decide to do in the future, you will gain extremely useful knowledge and skills in the undergraduate psychology major to prepare you for whatever career path you choose.