Research Methods, Design,

and Analysis
Eleventh Edition

CHAPTER 1
Introduction to
Scientific Research

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
Why learn about the scientific
research process?
• To learn the research process
• Provides a foundation for other courses
• To become a critical consumer of
information
• To develop critical and analytic thinking
• Learn to critically read a research article
• Necessary for most graduate programs

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
Methods of Acquiring Knowledge

• Intuition – knowing without reasoning

– used in forming some hypotheses (hunches)
– problem – no mechanism for separating
accurate from inaccurate knowledge
• Authority – facts stated from a respected
source
– can be used in the design phase of a study
– problem – authority can be wrong

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
Methods of Acquiring Knowledge
(cont'd)
• Rationalism – knowledge from reasoning
– used to derive hypotheses
• Empiricism – knowledge from experience
– observation used to collect data in science
– potential problem is researcher bias

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Science

• A more reliable and valid method of

acquiring knowledge
• Different scientific methods have been
popular historically

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Scientific Methods

• Induction – specific to general reasoning

– used from late 17th to middle of 19th century
– still used today when generalizing from
specific experiments to general hypotheses or
theory
• Deduction – general to specific reasoning
– involved in forming hypotheses from theory

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Scientific Methods (cont'd)

• Hypothesis testing – testing a predicted

relationship from theory or experience
– prominent from mid 19th century to about
1960 but still used extensively today
– associated with logical positivists
 philosophical position started by scholars at
University of Vienna
 believed that statements meaningful only when
verifiable by observation

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Scientific Methods (cont'd)

• Hypothesis testing – testing a predicted

relationship from theory or experience
– associated with logical positivists
 is an inductive position – observation confirming a
general hypothesis
– critic – Popper and his falsification position

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Scientific Methods (cont'd)

• Naturalism – evaluate science empirically

and methodology will evolve from this
study
– Kuhn and paradigms
 paradigm – framework or thought or belief
 science governed by types of activities
– normal science-shared paradigm
– revolutionary science – replace one paradigm with another

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Scientific Methods (cont'd)

• Naturalism – evaluate science empirically

and methodology will evolve from this
study
– Lakatos and research programs
 research program – framework in which a scientific
activity takes place

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Scientific Methods (cont'd)

• Feyerabend’s Anarchists Theory of

Science
– no prior approach identified a distinguishing
feature of science
– advocated that science does not give
knowledge superior to other forms of
knowledge

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Scientific Methods (cont'd)

• Feyerabend’s Anarchists Theory of

Science
– his position – the unchanging principle of
scientific method is that “anything goes”
 scientific knowledge is not better than other forms
of knowledge

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 What is Science?

• No universal, ahistorical method

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 What is Science? (cont'd)

• Method has to be defined at a single stage

in the development of a field
– Consists of some specific aims to arrive at
knowledge of some specific kind, methods for
arriving at those aims together with the
standards for judging the extent to which they
are met, and specific facts and theories that
represent the current state of play as far as
the realization of the aim is concerned

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
Basic Assumptions Underlying
Scientific Research
• Uniformity or regularity in nature
– determinism – the belief that mental process
are fully caused by prior natural factors
– probabilistic causes – a weaker form of
determinism that indicates regularities that
usually but not always occur
• Reality in nature – the assumption that the
things we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste
are real
Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
Basic Assumptions Underlying
Scientific Research (cont'd)
• Discoverability – the assumption this is
possible to discover the regularities that
exist in nature

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Characteristics of Scientific
Research
• Control—eliminating the influence of
extraneous variables
• Operationism—representing constructs by
a specific set of operations
– original focus was on operational def.
– objections to strict operational definition
 demands too strict
 each operational definition completely specified the
meaning of the term
Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Characteristics of Scientific
Research (cont'd)
• Operationism—representing constructs by
a specific set of operations
– operationalism focuses on features used to
represent a construct
 is essential for communication
 many different ways of representing constructs
 multiple operationalism involves use of multiple
measures of a construct

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Characteristics of Scientific
Research (cont'd)
• Replication— reproduction of results in a
new study
– reasons for failure to replicate
 effect doesn’t exist
 replication study is not an exact replication
 effect may depend on context
– meta-analysis – a quantitative technique for
describing the relationship between variables
across multiple studies

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Role of Theory in Science

• To summarize and integrate existing data

• To guide new research
• Continuous interaction between theory
and empirical observation

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Figure 1.2
Illustration of the relationship between theory and research.

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
Role of Scientist in Psychological
Research
• Curiosity
• Patience
• Objectivity
• Change

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Objectives of Psychological
Research
• Description –portraying the phenomenon
• Explanation – Identifying the cause(s) of
the phenomenon
• Prediction – anticipating the outcome the
occurrence of an event

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Objectives of Psychological
Research (cont'd)
• Control – manipulation of the conditions
that determine a phenomenon
– different meanings of the word control
 comparison
 eliminating influence of extraneous variables
 guidance

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Pseudoscience

• An approach that claims to be scientific

but in fact violates many tenets of science
• Attempted association with science made
in an attempt to gain legitimacy

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Strategies Used in
Pseudoscience
• Overuse of ad hoc hypotheses to explain
away negative findings
– characterized by statements that can’t be
falsified or ad hoc hypotheses to explain
problems with the claim
• Emphasis on confirmation rather than
refutation
– science tries to prove hypotheses wrong

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Strategies Used in
Pseudoscience (cont'd)
• Absence of self-correction
– does not try to verify or refute claims
• Reverse burden of proof
– asks critics to prove that their claims are
wrong
• Overreliance on testimonials and
anecdotal evidence

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.
 Strategies Used in
Pseudoscience (cont'd)
• Use of obscurantist language
– language that confuses versus clarifies
– uses scientific terms to sound respectable
• Absence of “connectivity” with other
disciplines

Research Methods, Design, and Analysis, Eleventh Edition Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Christensen • Johnson • Turner All rights reserved.