Methods in Behavioural Research
PSYB01
Methods in Behavioural Research Chapter 1: Scientific Understanding of Behaviour USES OF RESEARCH METHODS To make good decisions people must be able to read research literature in the particular field they’re working in, and apply it to their personal lives. Ex. people working in business environments frequently rely on research to make decisions abt marketing strategies, ways of improving employee productivity and morale, and methods of selecting and training new employees. Bottom line: knowledge of research methods and the ability to evaluate research reports are useful in many fields Important to recognize that scientific research has become increasingly prominent in public policy decisions & judicial decisions. An example of this is the Social Science Brief prepared by psychologists and accepted as evidence in the pcase precedent of Brown v. Board of Education US Supreme Court banned school segregation in the states. In the Clark and Clark study (1974), the researchers found that when allowed to choose b/w light-skinned and dark-skinned dolls, both Black and White children preferred playing with the light-skinned dolls Behavioural research on human development influenced the decisions related to juvenile crime especially in the 2005 case of Roper v. Simmons where the Supreme Court decided that juveniles couldn’t face the death penalty this decision was informed by neurological and behavioural research that showed that the brain, social, and character differences b/w adults and juveniles make juveniles less responsible/guilty than adults for the same crimes and juveniles should not be sentenced to life in prison. Research points out that juveniles’ have a lack of maturity and poorly formed character development Psychologists have provided science-based perspectives on the values of confessions. Research is also important when developing and assessing the effectiveness of programs designed to achieve certain goals ex. increase the retention of students in school. We need to be able to determine whether these programs are successfully meeting their goals
THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH People rely on intuition and authority as a means of understanding and explaining what they see and experience The limitations of intuition and authority intuition We use intuition to gather general conclusions about the world around us. When you rely on intuition you accept unquestioningly what your own personal judgement or a single story about one person’s experience tells you. Intuition often involves finding an explanation for our own behaviours or the behaviours of others. Intuition is also used to explain intriguing events that you observe ex. when an adoption is loosely followed by a pregnancy, you tend to conclude that adoption increases the chances of conception among couples having difficulty conceiving a child
Problem with intuition is that numerous cognitive and motivational biases affect our perceptions so we may draw erroneous conclusions about cause and effect. Gilvoch points out that there is no relationship b/w adoption and subsequent pregnancy according to scientific research Illusory correlation: a cognitive bias that occurs when we focus on two events that stand out and occur together (this is what the whole adoption increases the chances of becoming pregnant thing is). Illusory correlations are also likely to e recognizes occur when we are highly motivated to believe in the causal relationship it is a natural thing for us to do but its not scientific Authority: Aristotle was concerned with the factors associated with persuasion or attitude change. In his Rhetoric he said “persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and readily than others” basically he’s arguing that we are biased by our impressions of people, we are more likely to be persuaded by a speaker who seems prestigious & trustworthy than by someone who’s appearance lacks such qualities. Ex. we might automatically believe this argument w/o challenging it b/c it comes from Aristotle who is one smart dude and everyone knows him he is a convincing and influential source. The scientific approach rejects the idea that one can accept on faith the statements of any authority evidence is needed before we can draw scientific conclusions Skepticism Science and the Empirical Approach The scientific approach to acquiring knowledge recognizes that both intuition and authority can be a source of IDEAS about behaviour but scientists don’t unquestioningly accept anyone’s intuitions, including their own. Scientists don’t accept on faith the pronouncements of anyone regardless of their prestige or authority (so they won’t believe something just cuz Einstein said it’s true, they’ll question it!). Scientific skepticism: ideas must be evaluated on the basis of careful logic and results from scientific investigations Empiricism: the fundamental characteristic of the scientific model. It is the idea that knowledge is based on observations, and conclusions about the nature of the world are drawn from analyzing data collected. The scientific method embodies a number of rules for collecting and evaluation data Goodstein describes an “evolved theory of science” that defines the characteristic of scientific inquiry. The characteristics are: •
Data play a central role: for scientist knowledge is based on observations that will verify their ideas about the world. So they develop theories and conduct research that increases our confidence that their theories are correct. Scientists have a “show me, don’t tell me” attitude like I won’t believe it until I see in (IN WRITING!)
•
Scientists are not alone: Scientists make observations that are accurately reported to other scientists and the public; others can replicate the method and obtain the same results
•
Science is adversarial: ideas must battle with other ideas in order to move even closer to the truth. Research can be conducted to test any idea. Good scientific ideas are testable, the can be supported or falsified by data (the idea o proving a concept wrong is called falsifiability). 2
•
Scientific evidence is peer reviewed: other scientists who have expertise must carefully review and evaluate the research before a study is published in a scientific journal this is called peer reviewing. This review process ensure that research with major flaws won’t become part of the scientific literature o
Science is a free market of ideas in which the best ideas are supported by research and scientists can build upon the research of others to make further advances
Integrating Intuition, Skepticism and Authority • The scientific approach provides an objective set of rules for gathering, evaluating and reporting info its an open system that allows ideas to be refuted or supported by others. Authority and intuition aren’t completely forgone in scientific research; scientists rely on intuition and assertions of authorities for ideas for research. Scientific evidence is [usually] not obtainable for things like religion where we are asked to accept certain beliefs by fait. Science is based on evidence used to support or refute the ideas •
There is also nothing wrong with having opinions or beliefs as long as they are presented simply as opinions or beliefs. Ex. opinion on whether exposure to media violence increases aggression are only opinions until scientific evidence on the issue is gathered
•
It is wise to pay attn to someone with an established reputation in the field and attend to the reputation of the institution represented by the person, its also worthwhile to examine the researcher’s funding source.
•
You should also be skeptical of pseudoscientific research -pseudoscience is “fake” science in which seemingly scientific terms and demonstrations are used to substantiate claims that have no basis in scientific research o
The problem with all pseudoscience is that hopes are raised and promises wil not be realized & the techniques can be dangerous
o
Facilitated communication is an example of pseudoscience, it has been used by therapists with children with autism and produces impressive results. In this case though, a number of facilitators tped messages accusing a parent of physically or sexually abusing the child and some parents were convicted of child abuse
3
The scientific research on facilitated communication was used to help the
Characteristics of pseudoscience (directly copied from fig 1.1 p.7) •
Hypotheses generated are typically not testable
•
If scientific tests are reported, methodology is not scientific and validity of data is questionable
•
Supportive evidence tends to be anecdotal or they rely heavily on authorities that are so called “experts” in the area of interest. Genuine scientific references are not cited
•
Claims ignore conflicting evidence
•
Clains are stated in scientific-sounding terminology and ideas
•
Claims tend to be vague, rationalize strongly held beliefs, and appeal to preconceived ideas
•
Claims are never revised defendant parent
general rules to follow (about believing what you read/hear) 1. Be highly skeptical of scientific assertions that are supported by only vague or improbable evidence 2. Take the time to do an internet search for supportive evidence •
use www.snopes.com and www.truthorfiction.com to verify many of the claims on the internet (I personally just google all those hoaxes and chain mail stuff, encyclopedia google will never fail you)
GOALS OF BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE Scientific research on behaviour has 4 general goals 1) describe the behaviour 2) predict behaviour 3) determine the causes of behaviour 4) to understand or examine behaviour Description of Behaviour The first goal of science is to describe behaviour- which can be something directly observable (ex running speed, eye gaze, or loudness of laughter) or something less observable (like perceptions or attractiveness)…there’s an example on p. 8 about the Cunningham experiment about judgements of physical attractiveness, you can read it if you want, I didn’t find it helpful to the context Researchers are often interested in describing the ways in which events are systematically related to one another ex. do jurors judge attractive defenents more leniently than unattractive defendants? Prediction of Behaviour Once it has been observed with some regularity that two events are systematically related to oneanother (ex. greater attractiveness corresponds to more lenient sentencing), it becomes possible to make predictions. Predictions allow us to antipate events and the ability to predict helps us make better decisions. 4
Determining the causes of behaviour We might actually predict the occurrence of a behaviour but this doesn’t mean we have correctly identified its cause. Ex. child’s aggressive behaviour may be predicted by knowing how much violence the child views on television but uless we know that exposure to violent tv is a cause of behaviour we can’t make the claim that aggressive behaviour can be reduced by limiting scenes of violence on television To know how to change behaviour, we need to know the causes of behaviour Cook and Campbell: 3 types of evidence used to identify the cause of behaviour. So in order to conclude causation, 3 things must occur •
There is a temporal precedence: temporal order of events in which the causes precedes the effect. o
•
Covariation of cause and effect: when the cause is present, the effect occurs; when the cause is absent so is the effect o
•
We need to know that TV viewing occurred first and aggression followed
Children who watch violent tv behave aggressively and that kids who don’t watch violent tv are basically pacifists
Elimination of Alternative explanations: nothing other than a causal variable could be responsible for the observed effect . there should be no other plausible alternative explanation for the relationship
Explanation of Behaviour Scientists seek to understand why the behaviour occurs. Determining cause and explaining behaviour are particularly closely related b/c it is difficult ever to know the true cause or all the causes of any behaviour. N explanation that appear satisfactory may turn out to be inadequate when other causes are identified in subsequent research
Basic and Applied Research Basic research: tries to answer fundamental questions about the nature of behaviour. Studies are designed to address theoretical issues concerning phenomena such as cognition, emotion, motivation, learning etc. (skim through the examples given on p 11) Applied Research Applied research is conducted to address issues in which there are practical problems and potential solutions (read through examples on p.12) A randomized clinical trial: an experiment testing the effects of a medical procedure The distinction b/w basic and applied research is a convenient typology but is probably more accurately viewed as a continuum. Program evaluation: assesses the social reforms and innovations that occur in government, education, the criminal justice system, Campbell (1969) noted that social programs are really experiments designed to achieve certain outcomes he argued that social scientists should evaluate each program to determine whether it is having its intended effects 5
Comparing basic and Applied research Both are important and neither can be considered superior to the other. In recent years, many , many in our society, including legislators who control the budgets of research-granting agencies of the government, have demanded that research be directly relevant to specific social issues The problem with this attitude toward research is that we can never predict the ultimate application of basic research; research with no apparent practical value ultimately can be very useful Behavioural research is important in many fields and has significant application to public policy • stigations
6
Methods in Behavioural Research Chapter 1: Scientific Understanding of Behaviour USES OF RESEARCH METHODS To make good decisions people must be able to read research literature in the particular field they’re working in, and apply it to their personal lives. Ex. people working in business environments frequently rely on research to make decisions abt marketing strategies, ways of improving employee productivity and morale, and methods of selecting and training new employees. Bottom line: knowledge of research methods and the ability to evaluate research reports are useful in many fields Important to recognize that scientific research has become increasingly prominent in public policy decisions & judicial decisions. An example of this is the Social Science Brief prepared by psychologists and accepted as evidence in the pcase precedent of Brown v. Board of Education US Supreme Court banned school segregation in the states. In the Clark and Clark study (1974), the researchers found that when allowed to choose b/w light-skinned and dark-skinned dolls, both Black and White children preferred playing with the light-skinned dolls Behavioural research on human development influenced the decisions related to juvenile crime especially in the 2005 case of Roper v. Simmons where the Supreme Court decided that juveniles couldn’t face the death penalty this decision was informed by neurological and behavioural research that showed that the brain, social, and character differences b/w adults and juveniles make juveniles less responsible/guilty than adults for the same crimes and juveniles should not be sentenced to life in prison. Research points out that juveniles’ have a lack of maturity and poorly formed character development Psychologists have provided science-based perspectives on the values of confessions. Research is also important when developing and assessing the effectiveness of programs designed to achieve certain goals ex. increase the retention of students in school. We need to be able to determine whether these programs are successfully meeting their goals
THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH People rely on intuition and authority as a means of understanding and explaining what they see and experience The limitations of intuition and authority intuition We use intuition to gather general conclusions about the world around us. When you rely on intuition you accept unquestioningly what your own personal judgement or a single story about one person’s experience tells you. Intuition often involves finding an explanation for our own behaviours or the behaviours of others. Intuition is also used to explain intriguing events that you observe ex. when an adoption is loosely followed by a pregnancy, you tend to conclude that adoption increases the chances of conception among couples having difficulty conceiving a child
Problem with intuition is that numerous cognitive and motivational biases affect our perceptions so we may draw erroneous conclusions about cause and effect. Gilvoch points out that there is no relationship b/w adoption and subsequent pregnancy according to scientific research Illusory correlation: a cognitive bias that occurs when we focus on two events that stand out and occur together (this is what the whole adoption increases the chances of becoming pregnant thing is). Illusory correlations are also likely to e recognizes occur when we are highly motivated to believe in the causal relationship it is a natural thing for us to do but its not scientific Authority: Aristotle was concerned with the factors associated with persuasion or attitude change. In his Rhetoric he said “persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and readily than others” basically he’s arguing that we are biased by our impressions of people, we are more likely to be persuaded by a speaker who seems prestigious & trustworthy than by someone who’s appearance lacks such qualities. Ex. we might automatically believe this argument w/o challenging it b/c it comes from Aristotle who is one smart dude and everyone knows him he is a convincing and influential source. The scientific approach rejects the idea that one can accept on faith the statements of any authority evidence is needed before we can draw scientific conclusions Skepticism Science and the Empirical Approach The scientific approach to acquiring knowledge recognizes that both intuition and authority can be a source of IDEAS about behaviour but scientists don’t unquestioningly accept anyone’s intuitions, including their own. Scientists don’t accept on faith the pronouncements of anyone regardless of their prestige or authority (so they won’t believe something just cuz Einstein said it’s true, they’ll question it!). Scientific skepticism: ideas must be evaluated on the basis of careful logic and results from scientific investigations Empiricism: the fundamental characteristic of the scientific model. It is the idea that knowledge is based on observations, and conclusions about the nature of the world are drawn from analyzing data collected. The scientific method embodies a number of rules for collecting and evaluation data Goodstein describes an “evolved theory of science” that defines the characteristic of scientific inquiry. The characteristics are: •
Data play a central role: for scientist knowledge is based on observations that will verify their ideas about the world. So they develop theories and conduct research that increases our confidence that their theories are correct. Scientists have a “show me, don’t tell me” attitude like I won’t believe it until I see in (IN WRITING!)
•
Scientists are not alone: Scientists make observations that are accurately reported to other scientists and the public; others can replicate the method and obtain the same results
•
Science is adversarial: ideas must battle with other ideas in order to move even closer to the truth. Research can be conducted to test any idea. Good scientific ideas are testable, the can be supported or falsified by data (the idea o proving a concept wrong is called falsifiability). 2
•
Scientific evidence is peer reviewed: other scientists who have expertise must carefully review and evaluate the research before a study is published in a scientific journal this is called peer reviewing. This review process ensure that research with major flaws won’t become part of the scientific literature o
Science is a free market of ideas in which the best ideas are supported by research and scientists can build upon the research of others to make further advances
Integrating Intuition, Skepticism and Authority • The scientific approach provides an objective set of rules for gathering, evaluating and reporting info its an open system that allows ideas to be refuted or supported by others. Authority and intuition aren’t completely forgone in scientific research; scientists rely on intuition and assertions of authorities for ideas for research. Scientific evidence is [usually] not obtainable for things like religion where we are asked to accept certain beliefs by fait. Science is based on evidence used to support or refute the ideas •
There is also nothing wrong with having opinions or beliefs as long as they are presented simply as opinions or beliefs. Ex. opinion on whether exposure to media violence increases aggression are only opinions until scientific evidence on the issue is gathered
•
It is wise to pay attn to someone with an established reputation in the field and attend to the reputation of the institution represented by the person, its also worthwhile to examine the researcher’s funding source.
•
You should also be skeptical of pseudoscientific research -pseudoscience is “fake” science in which seemingly scientific terms and demonstrations are used to substantiate claims that have no basis in scientific research o
The problem with all pseudoscience is that hopes are raised and promises wil not be realized & the techniques can be dangerous
o
Facilitated communication is an example of pseudoscience, it has been used by therapists with children with autism and produces impressive results. In this case though, a number of facilitators tped messages accusing a parent of physically or sexually abusing the child and some parents were convicted of child abuse
3
The scientific research on facilitated communication was used to help the
Characteristics of pseudoscience (directly copied from fig 1.1 p.7) •
Hypotheses generated are typically not testable
•
If scientific tests are reported, methodology is not scientific and validity of data is questionable
•
Supportive evidence tends to be anecdotal or they rely heavily on authorities that are so called “experts” in the area of interest. Genuine scientific references are not cited
•
Claims ignore conflicting evidence
•
Clains are stated in scientific-sounding terminology and ideas
•
Claims tend to be vague, rationalize strongly held beliefs, and appeal to preconceived ideas
•
Claims are never revised defendant parent
general rules to follow (about believing what you read/hear) 1. Be highly skeptical of scientific assertions that are supported by only vague or improbable evidence 2. Take the time to do an internet search for supportive evidence •
use www.snopes.com and www.truthorfiction.com to verify many of the claims on the internet (I personally just google all those hoaxes and chain mail stuff, encyclopedia google will never fail you)
GOALS OF BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE Scientific research on behaviour has 4 general goals 1) describe the behaviour 2) predict behaviour 3) determine the causes of behaviour 4) to understand or examine behaviour Description of Behaviour The first goal of science is to describe behaviour- which can be something directly observable (ex running speed, eye gaze, or loudness of laughter) or something less observable (like perceptions or attractiveness)…there’s an example on p. 8 about the Cunningham experiment about judgements of physical attractiveness, you can read it if you want, I didn’t find it helpful to the context Researchers are often interested in describing the ways in which events are systematically related to one another ex. do jurors judge attractive defenents more leniently than unattractive defendants? Prediction of Behaviour Once it has been observed with some regularity that two events are systematically related to oneanother (ex. greater attractiveness corresponds to more lenient sentencing), it becomes possible to make predictions. Predictions allow us to antipate events and the ability to predict helps us make better decisions. 4
Determining the causes of behaviour We might actually predict the occurrence of a behaviour but this doesn’t mean we have correctly identified its cause. Ex. child’s aggressive behaviour may be predicted by knowing how much violence the child views on television but uless we know that exposure to violent tv is a cause of behaviour we can’t make the claim that aggressive behaviour can be reduced by limiting scenes of violence on television To know how to change behaviour, we need to know the causes of behaviour Cook and Campbell: 3 types of evidence used to identify the cause of behaviour. So in order to conclude causation, 3 things must occur •
There is a temporal precedence: temporal order of events in which the causes precedes the effect. o
•
Covariation of cause and effect: when the cause is present, the effect occurs; when the cause is absent so is the effect o
•
We need to know that TV viewing occurred first and aggression followed
Children who watch violent tv behave aggressively and that kids who don’t watch violent tv are basically pacifists
Elimination of Alternative explanations: nothing other than a causal variable could be responsible for the observed effect . there should be no other plausible alternative explanation for the relationship
Explanation of Behaviour Scientists seek to understand why the behaviour occurs. Determining cause and explaining behaviour are particularly closely related b/c it is difficult ever to know the true cause or all the causes of any behaviour. N explanation that appear satisfactory may turn out to be inadequate when other causes are identified in subsequent research
Basic and Applied Research Basic research: tries to answer fundamental questions about the nature of behaviour. Studies are designed to address theoretical issues concerning phenomena such as cognition, emotion, motivation, learning etc. (skim through the examples given on p 11) Applied Research Applied research is conducted to address issues in which there are practical problems and potential solutions (read through examples on p.12) A randomized clinical trial: an experiment testing the effects of a medical procedure The distinction b/w basic and applied research is a convenient typology but is probably more accurately viewed as a continuum. Program evaluation: assesses the social reforms and innovations that occur in government, education, the criminal justice system, Campbell (1969) noted that social programs are really experiments designed to achieve certain outcomes he argued that social scientists should evaluate each program to determine whether it is having its intended effects 5
Comparing basic and Applied research Both are important and neither can be considered superior to the other. In recent years, many , many in our society, including legislators who control the budgets of research-granting agencies of the government, have demanded that research be directly relevant to specific social issues The problem with this attitude toward research is that we can never predict the ultimate application of basic research; research with no apparent practical value ultimately can be very useful Behavioural research is important in many fields and has significant application to public policy • stigations
6
