Lecture
The methods of psychological research involve forms of collecting empirical data that make it possible to test hypotheses of a particular type. A method is a way of organizing a study to test the hypothesis that has been put forward.
Empirical methods are methods of psychological research characterized by different paths or ways of collecting experiential data. These are research techniques that realize a particular cognitive stance toward the subjective reality being studied, reflected in the norms of the method.
Any variant of the classification of psychological methods presupposes a distinction between the structure of the study, as the method, and the ways of recording empirical data, as the techniques.
A method, which defines the mode of the researcher's cognitive stance toward the subject being studied, can be realized through different means of operationalizing and recording data.
A method, as a mode of reasoning, includes certain norms for relating empirical facts and theoretical explanations. It is relatively free from the procedural aspects of collecting empirical material and is not limited to a particular subject area of psychology. One and the same method can be applied to the study of various basic processes.
Techniques are regarded as procedures, «techniques» of data collection, that can be incorporated into different research structures.
Sometimes a distinction is drawn between the structure of the general technique and the description of a special technique, since it is considered important to emphasize their connection.
2 approaches:
- the idiographic;
building an analysis of the individual case, identifying the features characteristic of it.
Example: the biographical method (techniques: archival analysis, interview)
- the nomothetic
considering the psychological features of an individual person through the prism of comparison with other people on general scales identified in advance.
Example: normative techniques, which involve assessing differences by relating individual indices to the averages for a normative group.
Thus, these paths are realized within the «method-technique» linkage.
Examples of techniques: survey, interview, observation, measurement of variables.
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