2  The Scientific Process

Welcome to the e-book. This book is a companion to PSYC3950 and will be used throughout the course. Prior to beginning new material, you should familiarize yourself with some material that you covered in PSYC2925 and PSYC2950. As a refresher, start here and refer to the chapter ‘Equations’.

Activity 1: How do we gain knowledge?

Imagine the following:

  • Your grandfather says that ‘kids these days spend too much time on the internet.’
  • A Twitter user suggests that teens are becoming dumber because of excess social media use.
  • A peer-reviewed scientific article suggests potential small effects of social media use on depressive symptoms.

Who would you trust more? What impacts this decision? How does your own biases impact your decision?

We all have biases, flaws, and are prone to making errors. Furthermore, our minds are wired to use heuristics to ease the cognitive load of processing vast amounts of information. While it can speed things along for us and do a reasonably effective job, it may lead us astray. As a result, it’s imperative to reflect on our biases and how that may impact how we collect and view information.

Researcher can implement a scientific methods (note the plural) to counter potential biases. Although there are many ‘ways’ to do science, they typically use a systematic approach to generating an argument or idea and method to test the verisimilitude (i.e., truthfulness) of the idea. For the purposes of this course, we will adhere to a common scientific method in psychology.

2.1 Theory

Quite broadly, we start with a theory. A theory is a set of ideas or statements that explain how phenomena–things you observe in the world– work. You encounter theories and apply them all the time. When you throw a ball to your friend, you do so with with an understanding that the Earth is bending space time and will cause the ball to accelerate downwards (i.e., gravity). When you go to the grocery store, you believe that you and the other customers have rights and responsibilities that they will abide by (i.e., social contract theory).

There are myriad theories in psychology. In fact, theoretical pluralism is often viewed as a strength and necessity in our field. Human behavior is so complex that we need a diverse set of theories to explain different behaviors in different contexts. For example, consider a theory seeking to explain suicide: the interpersonal psychological theory of suicide (Van Orden, 2010). The following statement can be derived from this theory:

Theory: Thinking about killing oneself are the result of the belief that one is a burden to others.

This simple statement offers an explanation for a phenomenon: if someone believes they are a burden, they believe that they take more from relationships than they give and that others are better off without them. Thus, suicidal ideations will follow.

2.2 Hypotheses

From a theory, we can derive a hypotheses – a specific statement that predicts something that will happen. When we throw the ball, we predict it will come down. When we are shopping for groceries, we predict that we won’t be assaulted or robbed, and that all customers will pay for their good. Going back to our theory of suicide:

Hypothesis: individuals who are induced with thoughts of burdensomeness (\(x\)) will have more thoughts of suicide (\(y\)) than those who are not induced thoughts of burdensomeness.

Thus:

\(x\rightarrow y\)

2.2.1 What makes a good hypothesis?

Several features of good hypotheses include:

  1. Testable
  • It can be empirically tested. You can design an experiment to test it.
  1. Falsifiability
  • The theory should be able to be proven false. As a simple example, imagine we predict that \(x\) causes \(y\). If we run an experiment and \(x\) occurs, but \(y\) does not, we have evidence that our hypothesis is false.
  1. Clarity and Precision
  • Researchers must clearly operationally define the variables of interest. What do we mean by ‘suicidal ideations’ or ‘believing they are a burden to others’? Furthermore, the relationships between variables should be clear. A major goal here is for others to replicate our findings.
  1. Simplicity
  • Hypotheses should be as simple as needed. Thus, hypotheses should offer the simplest explanation possible that does not cross over into reductionism.
  1. Theory-derived
  • Good hypotheses are grounded in strong theory or other emprical observations.

2.3 Designing Studies

After we have developed a suitable hypothesis, we can begin to plan out our experiment to test the hypothesis. Essentially, we can collect data and conduct statistical analyses. We compare the results of these analyses with our original hypothesis to conclude whether the hypothesis offers a good explanation of the phenomenon or not That is, does the data align or disagree with the hypothesis? If the former, we and other researchers should strive to accumulate more evidence to increase our trust in the theory from which the hypothesis is derived (i.e., replicate the findings). If the latter, we can refine or throw away the hypothesis or theory.

2.3.1 Steps to Conducting Analyses

An integral part of research is conducting the appropriate statistical analyses. In essence, we have an hypotheses (i.e., idea/prediction) about how the data should fit together (e.g., \(x\) and \(y\) are correlated; \(x \leftrightarrow y\)). Analyses allow us to model the data (i.e., force some structure to it) to determine how well it fits with our hypotheses. I try to adhere to this structure in this companion e-text:

  1. State the hypotheses
  2. Set your criteria and analytic plan
  3. Collect data
  4. Analyse
  5. Write your results/conclusions

2.4 Report or Disseminate the Findings

Importantly, we should communicate to other researchers and the general public exactly what we did, what we found, and what are the practical applications/meanings in an honest and transparent way. This can be through public forums, academic journals, or as registered reports. Ideally, we can accumulate enough evidence to support our theories and, ultimately, how we explain psychological phenomenon.

From Wiki

Through this companion, you will learn about several important considerations from the above. For example:

  • How can we test the hypothesis? Is it testable?
  • What ethical considerations are needed?
  • What is meant by each of the constructs listed above? How can we accurately and reliably measure ‘suicidal thoughts’ and ‘burdensomeness’?
  • Who should we collect data from and how?
  • Once collected, how can I analyse it?
  • How can we share our results?

However, the focus will be on statistical analyses related to the PSYC 3950 course at Grenfell Campus. We begin with a review of some common terms and concepts you should be familiar with. From there, explore various forms of analyses. Although not all of these are relevant for PSYC 3950, I have described them so you can refresh yourself.

Practice
  1. Identify a theory in psychology you would be interested in testing.
  2. Derive a hypothesis from this theory.
  3. Design a hypothetical study to test the hypotheses.
  • Who are the participants?
  • What materials do you need?
  • What procedure would you follow?
    • Ensure people reading your study design could attempt to directly replicate your results.
  1. What parties would be interested in knowing the results of the study?
  2. How would you communicate your results?