(P2) research methods Flashcards
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
what methods/designs are used to research mental health?
longitudinal designs
cross-sectional designs
cross-cultural methods
meta-analysis
primary & secondary data
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO1) longitudinal designs
longitudinal studies treat ‘time’ as one of their independent variables. it refers to a study that takes place over a long period of time, testing people at different points in time.
- like a repeated measures design
longitudinal studies are used to study developmental trends over time and are often used in child psychology, for example, looking at how a baby develops language over a few years. longitudinal designs follow the same participants or a single participant for a long period of time.
- many longitudinal designs are observations and do not involve manipulating variables.
longitudinal studies recruit a group of people at the same point in time (the cohort). the cohort may be people who are all of the same age. it may be people who all start an activity (e.g. people joining a mental health treatment programme) at the same time or receive a diagnosis at the same time for instance (showing how their illness progresses).
(1) data is taken about the cohort at the start, this is the baseline data
(2) there are usually several test points over the period of the study when the same data is collected again
(3) at the end of the study, there is a final test point
- the test point could be an observation, psychometric or biometric tests, interviews etc.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO1) longitudinal designs
what are the two types of longitudinal design?
Retrospective (or historic) studies take a cohort who all ended up the same way (eg developing schizophrenia), then “work back” through their lives to identify factors in the past that might have caused this.
Prospective studies take a cohort who don’t have anything special in common and follow them to see if they start differing from each other “into the future”.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO3) longitudinal designs
what studies are a longitudinal design?
Bradshaw (1998) carried out a case study of Carol, a young woman with schizophrenia. This was a prospective longitudinal design because it followed Carol’s progress over 3 years of therapy and revisited her again a year after the therapy finished.
- this is a retrospective (historic) longitudinal design because Bradshaw also investigated Carol’s past, such as her previous hospitalisations.
Brown et al. (1986) carried out a prospective longitudinal study of working class women in Islington, North London. The women were interviewed to assess self-esteem and social support then revisited a year later to see if any had experienced stressful life events and suffered depression.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO3) longitudinal designs
sample attrition
sample attrition is when the sample gets smaller because people are ‘dropping out of the study’. this isn’t a problem for case studies but it IS a big problem for prospective longitudinal studies.
reasons for sample attrition:
- Participants move away (and leave no forwarding address)
- Participants get bored of taking part
- Children grow up and stop consenting to take part
- Participants emigrate
- Personal problems (emotional, financial, psychiatric) get in the way of participating
- Participants go to prison or into hospital or become homeless
- Participants die
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO3) evaluate longitudinal designs
STRENGTHS
- longitudinal designs follow the same people or person over a period of time so PP variables like individual differences do not affect the results. it’s also likely that following a group of people, they will have had similar experiences.
- applications: another strength of longitudinal designs is that it is a good way of studying or identifying developmental trends. by studying someone or a group of people over a period of time, we can identify developmental trends as researchers repeat tests at regular intervals and compare the findings. for example, if a researcher wants to investigate how a mental illness affects someone’s functioning, they will use a longitudinal design.
WEAKNESSES
- reliability: over a long period of time, the researchers can form relationships with the participants and influence how they develop. Terman found this problem with his ‘Termites’ when he tried to help them with their careers.
- validity: Participants in a longitudinal study are almost always aware of being studied and this introduces problems. Many people are flattered for being selected for a study (especially if they have been selected for their “superior IQ”, like the ‘Termites’). This might make them more ambitious in life.
- sample attrition: there is a difficulty of keeping the PP’s for long enough to draw conclusions about their development or about the issue being studied. PP’s are likely to drop out of the study as they might as they might want to move away or no longer take part. withdrawal of PP’s also means if remaining PP’s share a characteristic, findings are biassed, this affects the reliability.
- there are a number of practical issues with longitudinal studies because they can be expensive, time consuming and data analysis can vary in its strength if the researchers change over time.
- there are also a number of ethical issues because studying PP’s over a long period of time may be intrusive (violates ‘privacy’ in BPS primary principles). if someone has already given informed consent they may also find it hard to drop out later.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO1) cross-sectional designs
a cross-sectional design is one where data is collected over a period of time but the difference of people is what is of interest. PP’s of different ages are studied at the same time (rather than one cohort in longitudinal designs). they are then compared against the other group.
- like an independent groups design.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO3) evaluate cross-sectional designs
STRENGTHS
- a cross-sectional design is reasonably cheap, quick and practical in comparison to a longitudinal design. a cross-sectional design requires less commitment (time-wise) from a researcher than in a longitudinal design. this also reduces the costs of researchers.
- PP’s are more easily obtained and more practical. this is because there is less pressure with cross-sectional designs than there is for them to stick with longitudinal studies.
- less ethical considerations with cross-sectional designs because the PP’s are not followed individually.
WEAKNESSES
- cross-sectional designs are not good for finding out the causes of something (e.g. a mental disorder) because they are descriptive research. the data is collected from a snapshot in time meaning it is harder to identify and analyse developmental trends in cross-sectional designs versus. longitudinal designs.
- there is less rich detailed data collected than there is with longitudinal studies with regards to individual PP differences.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO1) cross-cultural designs
cross-cultural designs are carried out by researchers who want to compare some behaviour or attitude in different cultures. it is used when researchers want to look at particular behaviour or pattern of thinking between different cultures. they compare data from the different cultures they are invested in and gather conclusions.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO1) cross-cultural designs
emic and etic
emic is an approach to studying cultures that looks at culture from within it, to find out about its norms and ideas.
etic is an approach to studying cultures that looks at norms and ideas between cultures.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(AO3) example study of cross-cultural designs
