Methods of Enquiry in Psychology

The goals of scientific enquiry in psychology are:

- Description: to describe behaviour or a phenomenon as accurately as possible.
- Prediction: to predict when a behaviour is likely to occur by finding its relation with other events or behaviours.
- Explanation: to identify the causal factors or determinants of behaviour and establish cause-effect relations.
- Control: to change behaviour by changing its antecedent conditions; this may mean making a behaviour happen, reducing it, or enhancing it.
- Application: to use psychological knowledge to bring positive changes in people's lives and solve practical problems.

These goals are pursued in an objective manner.

Scientific enquiry in psychology is conducted in a systematic way. The main steps are:

1. Conceptualising a problem: selecting a topic, narrowing the focus, and framing specific research questions or a hypothesis.
2. Collecting data: deciding the participants, the method of data collection, the tools to be used, and the procedure, and then actually collecting the data.
3. Drawing conclusions: analysing the data using statistics, graphs, tables, etc., to see whether the hypothesis is supported.
4. Revising research conclusions: if the findings support the hypothesis, it may be confirmed; if not, an alternative hypothesis or theory is framed and tested again.

Thus, research is a continuous process of testing and revising ideas.

Psychological data are the information collected in psychological studies. They may relate to:

- individuals' covert or overt behaviour,
- their subjective experiences,
- and their mental processes.

Their nature is as follows:

- They are collected from different sources using diverse methods.
- They are always context-based; they are linked to the physical or social situation, the persons involved, and the time of behaviour.
- The method of collection and the characteristics of respondents affect the nature and quality of data.
- Data do not speak for themselves; the researcher has to interpret them and place them in the proper context.
- Psychological data may be of different types, such as demographic, physical, physiological, and psychological information.
- They may also be found in crude forms like categories, ranks, scores, verbal reports, diaries, field notes, and archival records.

So, psychological data are varied, contextual, and require interpretation.

Experimental groups and control groups differ in whether the independent variable is present.

- In an experimental group, members are exposed to the manipulation of the independent variable.
- In a control group, everything is kept the same as in the experimental group except that the manipulated variable is absent.

For example, in the smoke-reporting experiment by Latane and Darley:

- The control group had one person alone in the room.
- The experimental groups had two other persons already seated in the room.

The researchers then compared how many people reported the smoke. The control group reported the emergency in the maximum numbers, while the experimental groups reported it less often. This shows how a control group provides a basis for comparison.

A relevant hypothesis is: As the presence of people increases, the speed of cycling will also increase.

From this hypothesis:

- Independent variable: presence of people
- Dependent variable: speed of cycling

The independent variable is the factor that is varied or compared, and the dependent variable is the outcome measured.

The experimental method has these strengths and weaknesses:

### Strengths
- It helps establish a cause-effect relationship between variables.
- It is a carefully regulated and controlled method.
- By controlling extraneous variables, it gives relatively convincing evidence about the effect of the independent variable.
- Random assignment and control groups improve the reliability of conclusions.

### Weaknesses
- Experiments are often done in highly controlled laboratory settings, so the results may not generalise well to real-life situations; this means low external validity.
- Some problems cannot be studied experimentally for ethical reasons; for example, one cannot starve children to study nutritional deficiency.
- It is difficult to identify and control all relevant variables.
- Laboratory situations may only simulate real life and may not fully reflect natural behaviour.

So, the experimental method is powerful for testing cause-effect relations, but it has limits of generalisability, ethics, and control.