Psychology as a scientific Method
Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and the mental processes
All Sciences (including psychology) follow the scientific method. The scientist sees a
problem forms a theory, gathers data for analysis, and draws a conclusion, which
confirms or disproves his/her theory.
The Goal of Psychology
The goal of psychology is to describe, explain, predict and control.
1. Describe: Psychology describes behaviors and mental processes; they range from the
most common to the most unusual
2. Explain: Psychology tries to explain all behaviors, and why humans react the way they
do.
3. Predict: Psychology tries to predict the way people will behave applications of this can
range from advertising, school planning, product development, therapy, etc.
4. Control: Now here it gets interesting through behavior modification, classic
conditioning and all sorts of therapies, which we will be learning over the semester
Research Methods
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Naturalistic Observation
Naturalistic Observation means that a scientist observes people, animals or things in their
natural habitat of course we are only interested in humans, "For example, a Dr. X wants
to know how children socialize so he might go and sit on a park bench near the
playground"
The Advantage is as long as the children do not notice him he can gather a lot of
uncorrupted information.
The Disadvantages are Observer Bias and that there is No Control.
Observer Bias Means that a researcher might see and interpret the events he is observing
to conform to his theory
A Solution to that problem is to have multiple observers or to video tape the people that
are to be observed
The second problem is that there is No control, if for example, you want to observe
children playing Hop-Scotch, another child might come along with a jump rope and they
might play jump rope instead.

Case Study
A Case Study normally consists of observation, one on one interviews with one or a few
subjects. There also might be testing involved, as it is the easiest way to gather in depth
information on one individual, or a family.
It is one of the essential tools to lay the ground work in various therapy forms.
The Case Study is not a tool for generalization

Surveys
Surveys are one of the most used tools in psychology as it allows the researcher to gather
a lot of information to prove or dis-prove his/her hypothesis with a relative small amount
of time and money.
There are a few important things you need to get a valid result from a survey, here are the
three key words to a survey: Sample, Population and Representative Sample
o Sample are the people that are taking the survey.
o Population is the group of people you want to learn about
o Representative Sample must include all subgroups of the population you
want to learn about in the same proportion as in the population you are trying
to draw conclusions about
For example, if you want to learn about the sexual behavior of young teenagers from low
income families, you might not want to give your survey at Beverly Hills High School.
Also you need to watch the proportions; Another example, if you wanted to study the sex
behavior of middle class teenagers in New York, you might want to go to a school where
there are the same percentage of all ethnicities represented as in the whole, so if there are
17% of African-American middle-class teenagers in New York - then you would want to
collect 17% of your survey from African-American middle-class teenagers. And let say
there are 48% Caucasian middle class teen-agers in New York then you want 48%
Caucasian middle class teen-agers in your survey...etc. Another thing, if of those 48%
Caucasian teenagers 55% are girls, you want that in your survey the same way.
In Conclusion, if you want a good survey you want a Representative Sample. The more
representative your sample, the better you will be able to generalize the results towards
your target population. And prove or dis-prove your Hypothesis.
(the numbers I used are random I do not know what the population break down of
middle-class teenagers in New York is)

Correlational Method
The Correlational Method establishes the relationship between two variables.
A correlation is expressed with a number between +1 and -1 it can be any where in that
range where as =1 means that when one variable goes up the other does, too
For example: if the rain in California increases by 10% and the harvest increases by 6%
that would be a positive correlation of +0.6. Another example is if you increase your
average speed on the highway by 5 mph, your full gas tank lasts 50 miles less. This
would be a negative correlation of -0.1
(again I am not sure about these numbers there are just examples and I am not sure they
are accurate)
o Correlation coefficient is what the number from +1 to -1 is called although
there are virtually endless fractional values there are only three states; a
positive, a negative and zero where as 0 means that there is no correlation at
all between the two variables.
There is also another problem its called the Third Variable Problem, if there is any other
value that changes during the measurement of the two you correlated you cannot prove
causation without further correlation.

Experimental Method
The Experiment is used to gather a wide variety of data (Of course there are limits to
what you can do in experiments and there are strict ethical guidelines)
The Experiment is the method used to determine cause-effect relationships. There are
three main concepts we need to know
1. Independent Variable (IV) – The research variable that researcher actively
manipulates, and if the hypothesis is correct, will cause a change in the dependent
variable.
2. Dependent Variable (DV) – The research variable that is influenced by the
independent variable. In psychology, the behavior or mental process where the impact of
the independent variable is measured.
3. Extraneous Variable (EV) - In order for an experiment to be valid it must be
protected from all outside influences everything but the Independent Variable must stay
the same.
You also you need to know these terms:

Experimental group This is the group that is subjected (exposed) to the
independent Variable treatment.

Control group This is the group that is subjected (exposed) to same environmental
conditions, but not to the independent Variable.

Selection bias - "This is basically the same problem as choosing a Representative
Sample in a survey," if the differences between the groups that are exposed to
different values than the selection is bias or fixed. It gets fixed by using a random
sample - which is to send the subjects by random drawing to the different groups.

Placebo effect This happen often at drug trials because people expect the pill or other
medication to help it does help a certain percentage of the people even though it has
no medicinal value what so ever. The way that is sorted out is by a control group. If
the percentage of people cured (or helped) by the placebo is the same or greater then
in the experimental group then it is most likely that the medicine has no effect on
the illness.
Some Experiments
1. If you wanted to find out if it makes a difference in acceleration if you have normal or
wide tires.
You would take two cars of the same make, model, year and mileage. Then you would
put them on the same strip of road accelerate for ten seconds. You might notice that all
those factors have to be the same since they are all Extraneous Variables.
Then you measure how far each car got (dependent variable).
Now the Independent Variable is, as you might have guessed, the tire size.
Here’s another example you might want to find out what guy’s find attractive long or
short hair on a women
1. Independent Variable = Hair Length
2. Dependent Variable = Attractiveness on a one to ten scale
3. Extraneous Variable = you got to use the same women on the same day so you will
have to use natural hair wigs of the same color and shade as her short hair.
Psychological Testing

Psychological testing has become very important tool in all parts of life today not
just the field of psychology but also when you apply for most collages and
universities you will have to do some kind of test like the SAT (Scholastic
Aptitude Test) other tests like IQ and others are commonplace nowadays. When
creating a test the researcher wants two things high reliability and high validity.
These two words are defined as follows;
 Reliability means that a test subject will score almost the same every time
they take the test.
 Validity means the ability of the test to measure what it claims to
measure.
The last things we need to talk about are replication and the technique called metaanalysis.

Replication you might have heard a few years ago about that researcher who
blew-up his lab and claimed that it was the result of cold-fusion. The reason
he did not get the Nobel-Prize for Physics was that nobody could repeat his
experiment and get the same results. Everything that becomes science-fact
must be able to be repeated, documented and analyzed by various Scientists.

Meta-analysis is a statistical tool in which the data of various studies are
combined and re-analyzed in order to check the validity of the hypothesis.