Quantitative & Qualitative Methods

• Goals of Psychology

  • Describe: learn what a behaviour entails and when it occurs
  • Predict: to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for determining when a behaviour will occur
  • Explain: identify the causes that determine what behaviour occurs and when it occurs
  • Control: learn to manipulate the factors needed to produce or eliminate a behaviour
• Quantitative Research (dominant)

  • Measurement (quantity)
  • Numerical data
  • Experimental methods (hypothetico-deductive approach)
  • Focuses on describing, predicting and identifying causes of behaviours
  • Typically large samples
  • Controlled settings in labs, objective, precise
  • Experimental lab studies, structured interviews/observations
  • Pre-determined structure
• Advantages of quantitative data

  • Precise (in terms of measurement)
  • Controlled (in terms of design)
  • Makes claims about causation
  • Has predictive power (can generalise to other settings in the basis of some finding in a particular setting)
  • Is the dominant approach in psychology
• Disadvantages of quantitative data

  • May grossly oversimplify complexity of human nature
  • May fail to recognise or be explicit about the subjective nature of social science research
  • May fail to recognise the individuality and autonomous nature of human beings
• Qualitative Research

  • Description (quality)
  • Often text-based data
  • Not experimental but is empirical gained through observation (inductive approach)
  • Focus on underlying meaning of behaviours
  • Typically small samples
  • Rejects the idea that there are simple relationships between our perceptions of the world and the world itself

  E.g's;

  • Un/semi- structured interviews 
  • Open ended questioning 
  • Participant observation  
  • Qualitative questionnaires 
• Advantages of Qualitative Research

  • Recognises the subjective experience of participants 
  • Often produces unexpected insights about human nature through an open-ended approach to research 
  • Enables an ‘insider’ perspective on different social worlds 
  • Generally does not impose a particular way of ‘seeing’ on the participants 
• Disadvantages of qualitative research

  • Cannot apply traditional notions of validity and reliability on the data 
  • It is often not appropriate or even possible to make generalisations or predictions 
  • Needs justification for it is still not a widely and consistently accepted approach to psychological research 
  • Lack of replicability
• Quantitative research approaches

  • Descriptive
  • Relational
  • Experimental
• Descriptive research

  • Allows us to describe a behaviour of phenomena
  • Shallow level, simple description, information gathering, describe characteristics of the topic you are studying to provide a clear picture of the area of study
  • Can't make predictions or imply causality
• Relational research

  • Allows us to predict a behaviour or phenomena based on it's relationship with another behaviour or phenomena
  • Relationship between 2 variables, if there is one then what is it's affect
  • Is able to make predictions but still can't imply causality
  • Correlation does not mean causation as we can't be sure that there aren't any other factors affecting the behaviour or that the relationships are coincidental
• Experimental research

  • Allows us to determine the cause of a behaviour or phenomena
  • Manipulate variables to see effect
  • Causality can be inferred because we have controlled for other variables
• Causation

  Relational= X is related to Y

  Experimental X is responsible for Y

  Causation depends on the ability to rule out alternative explanations for observed behaviours and to achieve this we must design our studies carefully and take care to ensure other variables are controlled properly
• Triangulation

  • All methods are limited in some ways
  • Methodological pluralism- use of multiple methods
  • Methodological triangulation- convergence of the findings of methodologically varying studies can lend credence to the theory pattern