week 1

Question 1

Nature of psychological research

Answer 1

Examining how people think, feel and behave
Finding out what influence how people think
Exploring people’s perspectives and the meaning that are attached to things
Examining how ideas, events and things are represented in language and how we make sense of them
Determining the consequences of thinking feelings, behaviours and sense-making

Question 2

Focus of Quantitative

Answer 2

Testing hypotheses and predictions
Assess significance of difference and associations
Explore potential causes of phenomena
Understand frequencies and proportions

Question 3

Ways to collect quantitative research data

Answer 3

Experiments
Structured observation
Psychometric test and scales
Questionnaire-based surveys

Question 4

Qualitative research

Answer 4

Qualitative research does not collect numerical data to test hypotheses, assess predictions, explore associations, or examine cause and effect

Aims to understand phenomena and uncover meaning

The data are non-numerical with a focus on answering questions relating to

Question 5

Qualitative

Answer 5

Explore a topic we have little knowledge about
explore individual experiences
examine meanings, views, and perceptions. Give participants a voice

Question 6

Way to collect qualitative research

Answer 6

Interviews
focus groups
Participant-observation
Audio/video recording
Naturally occurring interactions online data collection

Question 7

What dominated in the past

Answer 7

Quantitative methods dominated psychology in the past
Experimental research design- behaviourism and cognitive psychology
Qualitative research seen as unscientific

Question 8

1980S growing use of qualitative methods

Answer 8

Challenge to mainstream research design and practice through oppositional approaches

Question 9

Qualitative methods established use

Answer 9

understand meaning subjective experience, and under-represented group

Question 10

Big Q

Answer 10

Processes tend to be flexible interpretative and subjective/reflexive
Big Q reject notions of objectivity and context/researcher independent truths
Contextual and situated nature of meaning
Main focus of this module

Question 11

Small q

Answer 11

Use of qualitative techniques but within hypothetical-deductive framework
Concern with accuracy and reliability of coding
Structured codebooks of coding frames-which are then applied to the data
Multiple coders working independently to code the data

Question 12

What are qualitative methods good at

Answer 12

A focus on language the way things are represented in text or images
An interest in the perspectives, thoughts, feelings sense-making and individual experiences of people
It involves generating theories that are localised context-specific and often emergent from the field
Allows detailed understanding of attitudes emotions, opinions, experiences and arguments
Rather than quantify things as we do in quantitative psychology, we focus on what people are saying

Question 13

Methodological kite

Answer 13

Epistemology and ontology
What are your research questions
What data are you going to collect and how will it be collected
How will you analyse your data

Question 14

Research questions

Answer 14

They always start with What or How

Question 15

Data in qualitative research

Answer 15

Qualitative data tends to be in texts or images which are analysed in their raw form without coding them numerically
Generated by the researcher
Naturalistic or naturally occurring

Question 16

Methodological rigour

Answer 16

Trustworthiness: your confidence in the data interpretation and methods used in a study
Credibility: trustworthy comprehensive and sensible explanations of the data
Dependability: coherence between method and findings and level of transparency through the research process
Transferability: can the findings be transferred to other settings-their relevance
Conformability: Do findings and interpretations match views of the participants