Research Methods If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? Albert Einstein

Descriptive Research Basic Purpose: To observe and record behavior. Case Studies Surveys Correlational Studies Naturalistic Observation Quasi-Experiment

Case Study & in-depth Interview Advantages Provides in-depth information on individuals. Provides ideas for further research Disadvantages Cannot generalize the results to other individuals Cannot draw cause & effect conclusions

Surveys Advantages Disadvantages Can obtain descriptive information about large groups of people. Disadvantages May produce biased results because of atypical sample, overly positive answers, and/or inaccurate recall Cannot draw cause & effect relationship If we added a choice of "Football practice", we may find that football practice is someone's favorite "activity" at school, but it is not relevant to this particular question which asks "Which subject do you enjoy the most at school?" Consistency is very important in writing the list of responses. All of the responses should be similar so that no single response stands out to the individual except the answer that is true for them. Consistency simply helps to ensure that you are not leading respondents to a particular answer by making that answer different from the others. It also makes it much easier for respondents to find the answer that is relevant to them. In this example, the second choice is exactly the same as what we had before, but it is listed in minutes rather than hours making it inconsistent with the other answer choices. Listing answer choices in this way is very confusing for the respondent and makes it more likely that they will provide you with incorrect information.

Naturalistic Observation Advantages Provides information about people and animals in real-world settings. Disadvantages May be difficult to conduct research on infrequent behavior. Cannot draw cause & effect relationship

Correlation Advantages Disadvantages Can study behavior in real world settings. Can determine whether two variables are related. Disadvantages Cannon draw cause & effect relationship Correlation between smoking and lung cancer in US males, showing a 20-year time lag between increased smoking rates and increased incidence of lung cancer.

Experiment Advantages: Disadvantages: Can control potentially confounding variables Can draw cause & effect relationship Disadvantages: May be difficult to generalize to real world settings. Cannot manipulate many variables.

Quasi-Experiment Advantages: Disadvantages: Can study behavior in real world settings. Can draw tentative cause & effect conclusions. Disadvantages: Cannot control confounding variables as well as in a controlled experiment. Cause & effect relationships are not as firm as with the experimental method. “Genie” after she was discovered.

Which Research Method ? A director of a child welfare agency wants to understand the beliefs and feelings of people who were abused when they were children so that she can provide them with the support they need to prevent them from abusing their own children.

Which research Method? A high school teacher wants to know if allowing his students to listen to their favorite music on their iPods during tests will cause their test scores to increase.

Which research Method? A life insurance executive wants to know the percentage of people who obey traffic laws (i.e. wearing their seat belts or coming to a complete stop at a stop sign.)

Which research method ? A political biographer wants to know the specific people and events that motivated Bill Clinton to enter politics and eventually run for president.

Which research Method ? Ms. Stiles wants to explore the relationship between the number of hours spent sleeping and GPA.

Correlation Research Basic Purpose How Conducted To detect naturally occurring relationships; to assess how well one variable predicts another. How Conducted Computing statistical association, sometimes among survey responses.

Experimental Research Basic Purpose: To explore cause & effect. Manipulate 1 or more factors and use random assignment to eliminate preexisting differences among subjects. Experiment Quasi Experiment