research methods

• what is a case study

  an in depth study that gathers a lot of detail about one person or a small group
• examples of case studies

  - interviews

  - questionnaires

  - experiments

  - record of diagnosis

  - record of treatment / intervention

  - record of outcome

  - case histories / pre-existing records (school, employment, medical)

  - reports from others
• Phineas Gage Case Study (1848)


  Gage was tamping explosives into the ground to prepare the way for a new railway line when he had a terrible accident. The detonation went off prematurely and a tamping iron shot into his face. through his brain and out of his head. Gage survived although he was very changed in that he became aggressive etc. He had frontal brain damage which affected his personality
• H.M. Case Study


  HM died in 2008, he developed severe amnesia at 27 after undergoing brain surgery as a form of treatment for epilepsy. His surgery involved large parts of the hippocampus being removed on both sides of his brain and the result was that he was unable to store any new information in his long term memory.
• Victor Leborgne case study


  Leborgne was nicknamed 'tan' because it was the only sound that he could utter. A psychologist examined his brain and noticed a lesion in his left frontal lobe which the psychologist concluded was responsible for speech production
• Clive Wearing case study

  Wearing contracted a herpes virus that attacks the nervous system and the effects were so great he lacked the ability to form new memories and cannot recall aspects of his past memories. His memory lasts between 7-30 secs and believes each time he has woken from a coma.
• Wild Boy of Aveyron case study


  the wild boy of aveyron was found emerging from a forest in france at approximately the age of 12 having lived in the wild his whole life. He was feral and while trying to be socialised in Paris, he never learned to speak fluently buy hr dressed, learnt civil toilet habits, could write a few letters and acquired some very basic language comprehension.
• advantages of case studies

  - they provide rich and detailed qualitative data which allows for great insight into a patient

  - high ecological validity as they are real life situations
• disadvantages of case studies

  - subjective

  - lack generalisability

  - lack ability to replicate as each case is unique

  - ethical issues such as confidentiality, informed consent and protection from psychological harm

  - time consuming
• why do psychologists use case studies?

  to obtain qualitative in depth data
• what is content analysis


  a technique for systematically summarising and describing any form of content - written, spoken or visual. It is an indirect form of observational study, analysing materials produced by people
• what does the procedure involve?

  - deciding on a sample (ex: TV ads over a week)

  - coding the data using behavioural categories

  - counting how often these coding categories occur
• what does content analysis do?

  convert qualitative data into quantitative
• what is qualitative data


  more in depth, detailed and rich in words data
• what is quantitative data

  numerical data
• what happens in quantitative analysis

  the instance of each coding category is tallied and then can be represented using descriptive stats and graphs
• what happens in qualitative analysis


  examples in each category are described
• what type of data can content analysis be conducted on?

  - diaries, letters & photographs

  - TV programmes, ADs & movies

  - facebook posts, texts & graffiti

  - unstructured observations

  - magazines, books & newspapers

  - interviews and case studies

  - answers to open ended questions
• how to conduct a content analysis?

  - decide on research question

  - decide what you are going to analyse and how you will conduct this

  - decide how the content will be analysed or coded

  - develop a list of coding categories

  - pilot it and make necessary changes

  - take a sample and tally / count number of times the categories occur

  - check the reliability by correlating one researchers scores with anothers
• strengths of content analysis

  - high ecological value as it is about real life experiences

  - consistent therefore high reliability

  - easily replicable if the same coding categories and procedure are used

  - you can compare to check reliability
• weaknesses of content analysis

  - can be affected by observer bias, it is subjective to observers interpretation and researcher may find things they are interested in

  - turns quantitative data into qualitative, simplifies the data and therefore looses validity
• what is thematic analysis

  a type of qualitative content analysis which summarises data descriptively. It aims to identify underlying themes in the data, allow them to emerge and maintain the ppts' perspectives
• how to do thematic analysis

  - collect the data and write it out

  - read and re-read the data transcripts and break the data into meaningful units

  - code the data, and put into categories

  - combine codes into larger themes and look for recurring themes and patterns which run through and link the data

  - provide examples to illustrate the themes. write a report
• weaknesses of thematic analysis

  - affected by observer bias

  - free to interpretation

  - time consuming
• reliability


  the extent to which a test or measurement produces consistent results
• how is a study proved reliable?

  if a study is repeated using the same method, design and measurements and the same results are produced it is said to be reliable
• internal reliability


  concerns the extent to which something is consistent within itself
• external reliability


  concerns the extent to which a test measures consistently over time
• ways of assessing reliability

  - the split-half method

  - the test-retest method

  - inter-observer reliability
• the split-half method


  - measures internal reliability by splitting the test into 2 and having the same ppt do both halves. If 2 halves of the test provide similar results this indicates that the test has internal reliability
• the test-retest method


  measures external reliability by giving the same test to the same participants on 2 occasions. If the same result is obtained then reliability is established
• inter-observer reliability


  a means of assessing whether different observers are viewing and rating behaviour in the same way. This can be achieved by conduction a correlation of all the observers' scores, with a high correlation indicating that they are observing and categorising behaviour consistently.
• validity


  the extent to which results accurately measure what they are supposed to measure. How accurately a study investigates what it claims to and the extent to which findings can be generalised beyond research settings.
• how can validity be improved

  by improving reliability and by improving internal and external validity
• internal validity


  whether results are due to the manipulation of the IV and have not been affected by confounding variables.
• how can internal validity be improved

  by reducing investigator effects, minimising demand characteristics and by the use of standardised instructions and a random sample.
• external validity


  the extent to which an experimental effect can be generalised to other settings, other people and over time. can we apply the experiment to the outside world?
• how can external validity be improved

  by setting experiments in more naturalistic settings
• ways of assessing validity

  - face validity

  - concurrent validity

  - predictive validity

  - temporal validity
• what is face validity


  The extent to which items look like what a test claims to measure