The different methods used to investigate human behaviour include: experiments, surveys/questionnaires, observations and interviews. In the first unit we will look at the experiment.
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Researchers in psychology spend a lot of their time collecting data to measures different types of behaviour such as personality or memory. In quantitative research data are collected in order to test various hypotheses, this is called a deductive approach. You collect data to find evidence to support your claim. In qualitative studies the researcher wants to explore behaviour and phenomenon in order to understand the subjective experience and this is why qualitative methods such as observations and interviews are inductive, this means that there is no hypothesis. Psychologists make use of several methods of investigation, each of which has provided useful information about human behaviour and cognition. As you go on to study the various methods of investigation, you might wonder which methods are the best and the worst. You can compare the different methods of data in research to the spoons and whisks that a chef uses in the kitchen: depending on what he or she is making, a different utensil will be appropriate and research is similar. The aim of the study will determine the method and all methods are useful in order to give us a wide and trustworthy understanding of human behaviour.
The experiment, however, is the method to use if you want to make inferences about cause and effect and it is the most commonly used method to investigate behaviour and cognition in Psychology. The only way a researcher can establish causation (cause and effect) is by having one experimental condition where something is changed or varied and compared to a control condition where nothing is changed. The variable that is being changed is called the independent variable (IV) and the researcher is interested in seeing how changes the IV will effect the dependent variable (DV).
An example of an experiment is when researchers want to see if playing violent video games like Grand Theft Auto (GTA) makes you aggressive, they might let participants play GTA, this would be the IV, and then measure their heart rate afterwards (DV) to see if they are excited.
An experiment always has a control condition, a group to compare the experimental group to. For example, the study above would have a group of participants who played GTA and one group who played another game without violence like Minecraft, this way the researcher can compare the groups to see if the GTA playing made the participants violent.
An experiment always has a prediction of what will happen, a hypothesis. The hypothesis is a prediction about the future and it is often based on a theory.
THE IV WILL AFFECT THE DV=HYPOTHESIS
VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES WILL AFFECT LEVELS OF AGGRESSION
Now the researcher must collect data on how angry the participants are but first they must decide whether or not they can say that anything is going on at all. This is called the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis is the idea that something is going on in the first place, that there is a difference between the groups. A researcher must first reject the null hypothesis (say no to the idea that nothing is going on) in order to find evidence for the hypothesis.
THE IV WILL EFFECT THE DV=NULL HYPOTHESIS
VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES WILL NOT AFFECT LEVELS OF AGGRESSION
