Research methods for psychology section?

[akimhaneul]

Hello,

Every time I take a fl, I get owned by research methods questions on psych section that ask things like "Is the design and methodology of the study a true experiment?" or "How can the experiment be modified" etc.

How can I improve my understanding of psychology research methods? I feel like none of the content review books explain this very well. Should I just take a lot of practice exams to learn it?

Thanks!

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[minicutcarrots]

Your general understanding of research methodology plays a role in answering these questions; psychology research methods are just more fine-tuned to answer specific questions.

If you've done research or critically read peer-reviewed literature before, you should be familiar with what types of questions to ask... Does this study support the original hypothesis? Is the conclusion supported by the results? Are the results affected by bias or other confounders?

 

[akimhaneul]

Your general understanding of research methodology plays a role in answering these questions; psychology research methods are just more fine-tuned to answer specific questions.

If you've done research or critically read peer-reviewed literature before, you should be familiar with what types of questions to ask... Does this study support the original hypothesis? Is the conclusion supported by the results? Are the results affected by bias or other confounders?

So should I just take a lot of practice exams to develop this skill?

 

[aldol16]

Well, you should be familiar with experimental design. This is important. You should be able to interpret an experiment in the context of its design. A good way to do this is to read journal articles if you haven't been doing so already.

 

[NextStepTutor_1]

Hi akimhaneul,

Great question -- I definitely agree with all the other posters that understanding research methods is important and that regularly reading journal articles is a great way to develop that skill. However, that may be a daunting task (especially depending on when Test Day will be for you), so here are some specific goals that you can target:

• Types of study design: correlational, experimental, case-control, etc. The Wikipedia article on this is honestly not a bad jumping-off point, although you should definitely explore beyond what's on this page alone. The key point to focus on here is which types of study design are used to explore which questions. Why might a researcher use a cross-sectional correlational design, rather than an experimental design? When is a case-control design useful? Etc.
• Confounding vs. moderating vs. mediating variables. A question on this is a very real possibility. Here's a solid blog post on these points of terminology; I'd recommend that you read through it and/or other sources, and then try to come up with some simple, down-to-earth examples that work for you.
• Types of validity (these are generally covered in content review textbooks, and lots of sources are available online). What do they mean and what would it look like for a study not to have a certain type of validity?
• Pitfalls in research & in interpreting research. Some classic examples include insufficient statistical power, lack of various types of validity, confusion regarding correlation vs. causation, etc.

This list isn't necessarily exhaustive, but if you invest some time in familiarizing yourself with the above concepts, you should be much better positioned to tackle these questions. As you're studying research methods, always ask yourself why -- why do researchers use a certain design, why is a certain type of validity important, etc. -- and look for counterexamples to help solidify that point (e.g., why would a researcher use a cross-sectional, correlational design to assess dietary risk factors for cardiovascular disease rather than a blinded experimental design? What would it look like for a study to fail to have external validity? ...and so on). This will help you get the concepts on a deeper level than you can get just by memorizing definitions.

Hope this helps, and best of luck!