Chapter 5: A-Z Research Methods & Issues in Health Psych

Question 1

What is a paradigm?

Answer 1

state assumptions, laws and methods

• the basic belief system or worldview, a set of assumptions about the world and the individuals place in it
• A framework for research approach

Question 2

Describe the positivist paradigm…

Answer 2

Ontology (worldview of reality)
- There is ONE true, objective reality.

Epistemology (the way we come to know)
- Objective observation is possible and leads to the true discovery of reality

Methodology/Axiology
(how to collect info on reality/values)
- Experiments used to manipulate nature to see cause-effect relations or control reality and discover the TRUTH. Value free research
- e.g. traditional scientific experiments that abide by universal laws of nature

Question 3

Describe the critical transformative paradigm…

Answer 3

Ontology (worldview of reality)

• Reality is fluid but shaped by historically based cultural, social, economic, and gendered value systems/structures
• Ex. Feminism

Epistemology (the way we come to know)
- Knowledge based on values of investigator and participant who influence reality through interaction

Methodology (how to collect info on reality/values)
- Dialogue or interaction btw research and participant –> more informed awareness of reality

Axiology
(how to collect info on reality/values)
- Promote social transformation of structures and emancipation through consciousness raising
- Ex. Advocacy and activism

*Action oriented

Question 4

Describe the constructivism paradigm …

Answer 4

Ontology (worldview of reality)
- Many realities are constructed by people based on their positionalities and experience

Epistemology (the way we come to know)
- Interaction btw researcher and participant –> co-constructed knowledge and understanding of the world

Methodology (how to collect info on reality/values)

• Interaction and dialogue with participants refines mutual understanding of and co-constructs reality
• ex. narratives and ethnographies

Axiology
(how to collect info on reality/values)
- leaving the world more informed than before

• Reflects

Question 5

What is true about critical transformative and constructivism paradigms ?

Answer 5

They are both ontologically relativist

• Both, research is not worth or ethical if it does not improve the reality of the participants
• However they both create interpersonal problems around confidentiality and anonymity

Question 6

Describe qualitative, quantitative, and action research methods

Answer 6

Qualitative: focuses on individual experience

• Goal – get people to tell their stories (understand their experience)
• More about depth – interrogation of persons reality
• Positivism

Quantitative: emphasizes methods that are reliable and valid

• Goal – rich data about an experience or issue
• More about breadth – large sample sizes = representative generalizations
• Constructivism

Action research: facilitates social change processes

• Improvement, empowerment
• Growing discipline
• Ex. Digital story telling, incorporating community in research, etc.
• Critical transformism

Question 7

Draw the hierarchy of credibility

Answer 7

–

Question 8

Can research be neutral?

Answer 8

• Ex. Light - waves vs. particles
• Always up to an individuals interpretation
• Subjective

Question 9

List and describe all the research designs

Answer 9

• Abetween groups designallocates matched groups of people to different treatments (placebo/control vs. treatment your testing) to determine the effectivity of a therapy/treatment
• Adouble-blind controlis used in randomized controlled trials to prevent bias: both the investigator and the participant (subject) are prevented from knowing whether they are in the treatment or control condition.
• Cross-over or Within Participant Design in which a measure is taken before an intervention (pre-treatment) and again after the intervention (post-treatment).
• Cross-sectional studiesobtain responses from respondents on one occasion. Intended to garner a representative sample/cross section of the population
• Surveysare systematic methods for determining how a sample of participants respond to a set of standard questions attempting to assess their feelings, attitudes, beliefs or knowledge
• Diaries anddiary techniquesfrequently have been used as a method for collecting information about temporal changes in health status
• Direct Observation: directly observing behaviour in a relevant setting. May be accompanied by recordings in written, oral, auditory or visual form.
• case study’is used to describe a detailed descriptive account of an individual, group or collective. Yields thick descriptive information on a phenomenon
• Discourse analysisis a set of procedures for analysing language as used in speech or texts.
• Semi-structured interviews are designed to explore the participant’s view of things with the minimal amount of assumptions from the interviewer.
• Focus groupscomprise one or more group discussions in which participants ‘focus’ collectively upon a topic or issue usually presented to them

Question 10

What is the measurement problem?

Answer 10

• For over 60 yrs psychology has been ‘measuring’ attributes
• Not clear these attributes are actually quantifiable
• Health psychology over comes this problem by looking at qualitative experience

Question 11

Define ethics

Answer 11

• Standards of conduct that protect research participants from physical or psychological harm
• Research involving humans is governed by the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS)
• Institutional Research Ethics Boards (REBs) determine whether research is ethically sound

Question 12

To understand the importance of research ethics we must ask…

Answer 12

1) What is research?
- What constitutes research?

2) What is the purpose of research?

Question 13

Case Study: Tuskegee Syphilis Trials

Answer 13

-Participants = 600 African -American men
- US Public Health Service tricked participants by offering free health care
- Some had syphilis others deliberately infected with it
Were never told they had the disease or treated for it
- Lead to the death of many participants and their families
- Precedent setting case –> the requirement of informed consent forms in publicly funded research

“For the most part doctors and civil servants simply did their jobs. Some merely followed orders, others worked for the glory of science,”

Question 14

Case Studies

Answer 14

1) Negros Villages
2) Saartjie Baartman
3) Trucanani
4) Henrietta Lacks (HeLa Cell Line)

Question 15

Purpose of research

Answer 15

1) Corporations $$$

- Ex. Breast cancer awareness on mikes hard lemonade

Question 16

Linda T Smith

Answer 16

• Problematizes and interrogates what we count as knowledge and research
• Research has long been a tool of colonialism and exploitation of the “inferior” other, which denies ‘their’ humanity
• IF one is not considered a human being, then you don’t have any rights or dignity to violate Tuskegee and Eugenics

“imperialism is integral to the development of the modern state of science and ideas of the modern human person,” (Linda T. Smith).

Question 17

Questions to Consider

Answer 17

• For whom does the researcher speak?
• Are there groups whose voices we do not (or cannot) hear?
• Are our concepts and even the questions we ask ethnocentric or gendered?
• Who are we writing into or out of being through our research?
• Whose side are we (the researcher) on?

Question 18

What are ethical principles and guidelines

Answer 18

• Autonomy: respect of the participant’s right to self determination and right to be informed about the purpose, harms and benefits of the research before consenting.
• Nonmaleficence: (the principle of doing no harm)
  Beneficence: (the obligation to do good)
  = Minimize harm Maximize good
• Justice: all members of society should assume their fair share of both benefits and burdens of the research.