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Quantitative and Qualitative Methods for Research

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Title: Quantitative and Qualitative Methods for Research


1
Quantitative and Qualitative Methods for Research
  • Lecture 1
  • Introduction and Psychology as a Science
  • Alan Garnham

2
Course Documents
  • At the moment there are problems with the
    official teaching pages for this course
  • For my materials, for the moment please see
  • www.biols.susx.ac.uk/Home/Alan_Garnham/Teaching/QQ
    M
  • Dan Wright, who is taking the next five sessions,
    will probably also use his personal pages to post
    course materials

3
Courses over the Year
  • Autumn Term
  • Quantitative and Qualitative Methods for Research
    (this course)
  • SPSS 1
  • Spring Term
  • Statistical Methods
  • SPSS 2
  • Summer Term
  • Advance Statistical Methods (optional except for
    MRes)

4
Aims for the Year
  • To be able to examine psychology research and
    methods critically.
  • To have in depth understanding of the basics of
    statistical analysis.
  • To being able to analyse (fairly complex) data
    using SPSS.
  • To be acquainted with some advanced techniques
    and be able to apply these to data sets.
  • Not to be afraid to learn new statistics.
  • To understand some of the skills necessary for
    being a researcher.

5
Additional Aim
  • To meet each other and learn about what different
    people are doing in other areas of psychology.

6
Background
  • The course content is heavily influenced by
    what the UKs Economic and Social Research
    Council (ESRC) suggests for postgraduate research
    training.

7
Practicalities This Term
  • Friday Mornings lectures (Alan Garnham, Dan
    Wright, Richard de Visser, John Drury, Pete
    Clifton).
  • This is the Quantitative and Qualitative Methods
    for Research course
  • Friday/Tuesday Afternoon Computing Workshops.
    (David Reby with demonstrators Sam Knowles,
    Gustav Kuhn, Dawn Watling)
  • This is the SPSS 1 course (starting in week 2)

8
Assignment for Quantitative and Qualitative
Methods
  • Assessed assignment
  • Write a grant proposal (see the course handbook
    for more details).

9
  • Statistics are about accurately describing
    the appropriate patterns in data to others using
    numeric, graphic, and verbal forms of
    communication.

10
Outline for this Term (QQM)
  • Philosophy/Conceptual Issues
  • Psychology as a Science, hypotheses, sampling,
    causation, measurement.
  • Revisiting statistical concepts
  • Chi-square, t-tests, power, ANOVA, correlation,
    regression, making good graphs.
  • Qualitative Methods
  • Phenomenological Methods (Richard de Visser)
  • Discourse Analysis (John Drury)
  • Ethics (Pete Clifton)

11
Psychology as a Science
  • Public perception Are you reading my mind?
  • Different types of Psychologist (Not all
    Scientists)
  • Some are the off the wall therapists
  • Are the professionals better?
  • Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor (John
    Mack) estimated that 3.7 million Americans have
    been abducted by aliens
  • BPS survey (Counselling and Clinical sections)
    1/3 believe memories cannot be created
  • 97 believe the essential accuracy of Satanic
    Ritual Abuse memories
  • Pendergrast (1996 Victims of Memory) what
    the therapists would have said about past lives
    or alien abduction memories (p. 586). Morton
    Oh, thank God we didnt ask them about that!

12
How Science Progresses
  • Steady accumulation of knowledge
  • Popper - falsifiability
  • can imagine it being false, can imagine testing
    this
  • Used in Daubert (1993)
  • Kuhn Paradigms
  • Einsteins gravitational theory completely
    different from Newtons (eg., mass completely
    different)
  • Lakatos - core, generally accepted
  • Competing theories (lots say this)
  • At a micro-level (in Psychology) null
    hypothesis significance testing (NHST)

13
Cronbachs (1957) Two Disciplines of Psychology
  • (APA Presidential Address)
  • Experimental
  • Correlational (non-experimental)
  • NB - both are empirical - not all Psychology is
    empirically oriented

14
Group Work Experimental vs Non-Experimental
  • Which is better for psychology?
  • and no theyre both good, complementary
    answers
  • Write down your answer and give two reasons.
  • Get into groups of 3-5. Choose people who gave
    the same answer (ie., experimental or
    non-experimental) as you.
  • Discuss (and introduce yourselves)
  • What did you use in your project? Why?

15
Laws in Nature hypotheses / models in science)
  • X -gt Y
  • Want Chocolate -gt Have Chocolate
  • iff Y if and only if
    X
  • X Y different descriptions of same
    thing
  • for every action there is a reaction an equal
    and opposite reaction is action equals reaction
  • (Feynman et al., 1963, p. 10-2)

16
Types of Hypothesis
  • Strict if X occurs Y occurs (X
    is sufficient for Y)
  • If you want
    chocolate, you have it.
  • if Y has occurred X must
    have occurred
  • (X is necessary for Y)
  • Only have
    chocolate if you want it
  • Associative Y is more likely to occur if X
    than if not X
  • Purely statistical, data
    driven
  • Ceteris Paribus X -gt Y all other things being
    equal
  • Want -gt Have unless Tea Bar closed
  • The all other things being equal, or CP, is
    important.

17
All Other Things being Equal
  • Suggests it is clear what the other things are
    that have to be equal.
  • Leads to the notion of Experimental Control
    (other things are deliberately made equal, so
    that the X -gt Y relation can be studied)

18
CP (Ceteris Paribus) Laws
  • Fodor (1991) argues that psychological laws must
    be CP (compare, for example, Boyles Law in
    Physics).
  • BUTis proposing CP Laws cop out?
  • X -gt Y all other things being equal
  • Is this just saying
  • X -gt Y unless it doesnt ?
  • The conditions must fit in with the theories
  • There are physical realizations of X (like the
    brain states for want chocolate), and certain
    completer events (like have money), that
    together lead to Y.
  • Should psychologists be concerned with the
    conditions necessary for the effects?

19
CP Hypotheses
  • the goal of psychological theory construction
    is not to predict most (or even all) of the
    variance it is to explicate the underlying
    mechanisms upon whose operation the variance
    depends (Fodor Pylyshyn, 1981, p. 154).
  • NB - associations predict variance
  • So what does this approach buy us?

20
Experimental Research and CP Laws
  • Experimental research is associated with the
    search for/ assessment of CP Laws, but in a small
    number of situations.
  • There exists some situation (a completer) such
    that X -gt Y
  • Falsifying this falsifies only the strict
    (sufficient) X -gt Y
  • Reliably predicting failures means the law needs
    to be adjusted
  • Example (Script theory at least in 1977)
  • People know they eat food and then pay for it in
    restaurants.
  • Exceptions are fast food restaurants.
  • Schank Abelson (1977) create a track for fast
    food places
  • Can get circular ... fast food equate with pay
    first
  • For science, exceptions need other predictive
    differences

21
Non-Experimental X Y associated
  • Quasi-experimental
  • females v males
  • Cant conclude, for example, that gender effects
    something
  • Can conclude that woman score higher on some task
  • Naturalistic
  • Often test relationships in multiple situations
  • Can sample situations
  • Ecological validity
  • More difficult statistically
  • Models describe patterns.
  • They simplify our observations of nature. These
    may help us to understand how these patterns
    occurred.

22
Two Types of Scientific Goals
  • Laws that describe the causal mechanisms
  • Experimental Studies
  • Models that describe the patterns in nature
  • Correlational studies
  • All scientists should be interested in both.
  • There are proper procedures for both
  • (which you are here to learn)
  • Next week (Dan Wright on)
  • Statistics are about measuring the effects of
    causes, rather than the causes of effects.
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