w4

Using Figure 1.2 in Ch. 1 of Exploring Research, create a flowchart using Microsoft® Word or a similar program that helps you identify what research design to use for your research question. 

Figure 1.2 Research Design “cheat sheet”

Say Hello to Research!

Walk down the hall in any building on your campus where social and

behavioral science professors have their offices in such departments as

psychology, education, nursing, sociology, and human development. Do you

see any bearded, disheveled, white-coated men wearing rumpled pants and

smoking pipes, hunched over their computers and mumbling to themselves?

How about disheveled, white-coated women wearing rumpled skirts, smoking

pipes, hunched over their computers, and mumbling to themselves?

Researchers hard at work? No. Stereotypes of what scientists look like

and do? Yes. What you are more likely to see in the halls of your classroom

building or in your adviser’s office are men and women of all ages who are

hard at work. They are committed to finding the answer to just another piece

of the great puzzle that helps us understand human behavior a little better

than the previous generation of scientists.

Like everyone else, these people go to work in the morning, but unlike

many others, these researchers have a passion for understanding what they

study and for coming as close as possible to finding the “truth.” Although these

truths can be elusive and sometimes even unobtainable, researchers work

toward discovering them for the satisfaction of answering important questions

and then using this new information to help others. Early intervention

programs, treatments of psychopathology, new curricula, conflict resolution

techniques, effective drug treatment programs, and even changes in policy and

law have resulted from evidence collected by researchers. Although not always

perfect, each little bit of evidence gained from a new study or a new idea for a

study contributes to a vast legacy of knowledge for the next generation of

researchers such as yourself.

You may already know and appreciate something about the world of

research. The purpose of this book is to provide you with the tools you need to

do even more, such as

• develop an understanding of the research process.

• prepare yourself to conduct research of your own.

• learn how to judge the quality of research.

• learn how to read, search through, and summarize other research.

• learn the value of research activities conducted online.

• reveal the mysteries of basic statistics and show you how easily they can

be used.

• measure the behaviors, traits, or attributes that interest you.

• collect the type of data that relate to your area of interest.

• use a leading statistical package (SPSS) to analyze data.

• design research studies that answer the question that you want answered.

• write the type of research proposal (and a research report) that puts you in control—

one that shows you have command of the content of the research as well as the way

in which the research should be done.

Sound ambitious? A bit terrifying? Exciting? Maybe those and more, but boring is

one thing this research endeavor is not. This statement is especially true when you

consider that the work you might be doing in this class, as well as the research proposal

that you might write, could hold the key to expanding our knowledge and understanding

of human behavior and, indirectly, eventually helping others.

So here you are, beginning what is probably your first course in the area of research

methods and wondering about everything from what researchers do to what your topic

will be for your thesis. Relax. Thousands of students have been here before you and

almost all of them have left with a working knowledge of what research is, how it is

done, and what distinguishes a good research project from one that is doomed. Hold on

and let’s go. This trip will be exciting.

What Research Is and What It Isn’t

Perhaps it is best to begin by looking at what researchers really do. To do so, why not

look at some of the best? Here are some researchers, the awards they have won, and the

focus of their work. All of these people started out in a class just like the one you are in,

reading a book similar to the one you are reading. Their interest in research and a

particular issue continued to grow until it became their life’s work.

The following awards were given in 2009 by the American Psychological Association

in recognition of outstanding work.

Susan E. Carey from the psychology department at Harvard University was

honored for her contributions to the field of cognitive development and developmental

psychology. The work that she did early in her career focused on understanding how

children learn language, and she coined the term “fast mapping” for how children can

learn the meaning of a new word with very little experience with that word.

Nancy E. Adler from the University of California won the Distinguished Scientific

Award for the Applications of Psychology for her work in health. Her early research

focused on the health behaviors in adolescence, and she explained the incredibly

interesting question of why individuals engage in health-damaging behaviors and how

their understanding of risk affects their choices.

Finally, one of several Distinguished Scientific Awards for Early Career

Contributions to Psychology went to Jennifer A. Richeson from Northwestern University

for her work on stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, and inter-group conflict. This

focus examined the experiences and behaviors both of members of devalued groups and

of members of dominant groups.

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) also gives out awards that

recognize important contributions.

The 2009 E. F. Lindquist award was given to Wim J. van der Linden for his

contributions to the field of testing and measurement, including optimal test design and

adaptive testing. The award is named after E. F. Lindquist, who was a founder of The

American College Testing Program, and is given for outstanding applied or theoretical

research in the field of testing and measurement.

2 Exploring Research

Research is, among

other things, an

intensive activity that is

based on the work of

others and generates

new ideas to pursue and

questions to answer.

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Chapter 1: The Role and Importance of Research 3

AERA has an extensive award program including the Distinguished Contributions

to Gender Equity in Education Research Award, given to Sandra Harding

from the University of California–Los Angeles in recognition of her research that

helps to advance public understanding of gender and/or sexuality in the education

community.

And, as with many other organizations, AERA also offers awards for researchers

still early in their careers, such as the Early Career Award won by Michele Moses from

the University of Colorado–Boulder and Nell Duke from Michigan State University.

What all these people have in common is that at one time or another during their

professional careers, they were active participants in the process of doing research.

Research is a process through which new knowledge is discovered. A theory, such as a

theory of motivation, or development, or learning, for example, helps us to organize this

new information into a coherent body, a set of related ideas that explain events that

have occurred and predict events that may happen. Theories are an important part of

science. It is at the ground-floor level, however, that the researcher works to get the ball

rolling, adding a bit of new insight here and a new speculation there, until these factors

come together to form a corpus of knowledge.

High-quality research is characterized by many different attributes, many of which

tend to be related to one another and also tend to overlap. High-quality research

• is based on the work of others,

• can be replicated,

• is generalizable to other settings,

• is based on some logical rationale and tied to theory,

• is doable,

• generates new questions or is cyclical in nature,

• is incremental, and

• is an apolitical activity that should be undertaken for the betterment of society.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

First, research is an activity based on the work of others. No, this does not mean

that you copy the work of others (that’s plagiarism), but you always look to the work

that has already been done to provide a basis for the subject of your research and how

you might conduct your own work. For example, if there have been 200 studies on

gender differences in aggression, the results of those studies should not be ignored. You

may not want to replicate any one of these studies, but you certainly should take

methodologies that were used and the results into consideration when you plan your

own research in that area.

A good example of this principle is the tremendous intellectual and scientific effort

that went into the creation of the atomic bomb. Hundreds of top scientists from all over

the world were organized at different locations in an intense and highly charged effort to

combine their knowledge to create this horrible weapon. What was unique about this

effort is that it was compressed in time; many people who would probably share each

other’s work in any case did so in days rather than months because of the military and

political urgency of the times. What was discovered one day literally became the basis

for the next day’s experiments (see Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The

Making of the Atomic Bomb, for the whole story).

Second, while we’re talking about other studies, research is an activity that can be

replicated. If someone conducts a research study that examines the relationship

between problem-solving ability and musical talent, then the methods and procedures

(and results) of the experiment should be replicable with other groups for two reasons.

First, one of the hallmarks of any credible scientific finding is that it can be replicated.

If you can spin gold from straw, you should be able to do it every time, right? How about

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Exploring Research, Eighth Edition, by Neil J. Salkind. Published by Pearson. Copy

using a new method to teach children to read? Or developing early intervention

programs that produce similar results when repeated? Second, if the results of an

experiment can be replicated, they can serve as a basis for further research in the

same area.

Third, good research is generalizable to other settings. This means, for example, that

if adolescent boys are found to be particularly susceptible to peer pressure in one

setting, then the results would probably stand up (or be generalizable) in a different but

related setting. Some research has limited generalizability because it is difficult to

replicate the exact conditions under which the research was carried out, but the results

of most research can lend at least something to another setting.

Fourth, research is based on some logical rationale and tied to theory. Research

ideas do not stand alone merely as interesting questions. Instead, research activity

provides answers to questions that help fill in pieces to what can be a large and

complicated puzzle. No one could be expected to understand, through one grand

research project, the entire process of intellectual development in children, or the

reason why adolescents form cliques, or what actually happens during a midlife crisis.

All these major areas of research need to be broken into smaller elements, and all these

elements need to be tied together with a common theme, which more often than not is

some underlying, guiding theory.

Fifth, and by all means, research is doable! Too often, especially for the young or

inexperienced scientist (such as yourself), the challenge to come up with a feasible idea

is so pressing that almost anything will do as a research topic. Professors sometimes see

thesis statements from students such as, “The purpose of this research is to see if the use

of drugs can be reduced through exposure to television commercials.” This level of

ambiguity and lack of a conceptual framework makes the statement almost useless and

certainly not doable. Good research poses a question that can be answered, and then

answers it in a timely fashion.

Sixth, research generates new questions or is cyclical in nature. Yes, what goes

around comes around. The answers to today’s research questions provide the foundation

for research questions that will be asked tomorrow. You will learn more about this

process later in this chapter when a method of scientific inquiry is described.

Seventh, research is incremental. No one scientist stands alone; instead, scientists

stand on the shoulders of others. Contributions that are made usually take place in

small, easily definable chunks. The first study ever done on the development of

language did not answer all the questions about language acquisition, nor did the most

recent study put the icing on the cake. Rather, all the studies in a particular area come

together to produce a body of knowledge that is shared by different researchers and

provides the basis for further research. The whole, or all the knowledge about a

particular area, is more than the sum of the parts, because each new research advance

not only informs us but it also helps us place other findings in a different, often fruitful

perspective.

Finally, at its best, research is an apolitical activity that should be undertaken for

the betterment of society. I stress “at its best,” because too often various specialinterest

groups dictate how research funding should be spent. Finding a vaccine for

acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) should not depend on one’s attitudes

toward individual lifestyles. Similarly, whether early intervention programs should

be supported is independent of one’s personal or political views. And should research

on cloning be abandoned because of its potential misuse? Of course not. It’s how

the discovery of new knowledge is used that results in its misuse, not the new

knowledge itself.

Although it should be apolitical, research should have as its ultimate goal the

betterment of society. Researchers or practitioners do not withhold food from

pregnant women to study the effects of malnutrition on children. To examine the

stress–nutrition link, researchers do not force adults to eat particular diets

Chapter 1: The Role and Importance of Research 5

that might be unhealthy. These unethical practices would not lead to a greater end,

especially because there are other ways to answer such questions without resorting

to possibly harmful practices.

If these attributes make for good research, what is bad research? It takes the

opposite approach of all the things stated earlier and then some. In sum, bad research is

the fishing trip you take looking for something important when it simply is not to be

found. It is plagiarizing other people’s work, or falsifying data to prove a point, or

misrepresenting information and misleading participants. Unfortunately, there are

researchers whose work is characterized by these practices, but they are part of an

overall minority.

TEST YOURSELF

Note: At the end of every major heading in each chapter of Exploring Research, we’ll have

a few questions for you that we hope will help you understand the content and guide your

studying.

Provide an example of how research is incremental in nature and what advantage is this to

both future and past researchers?

Think of an example of how knowledge about a certain topic can lead to new questions

about that, or a related, topic.

A Model of Scientific Inquiry

In the past 20 years, the public has been exposed to the trials and tribulations of the

research process as described through hundreds of books by and about the everyday

work of scientists around the world.

Regardless of the specific content of these books, they all have one thing in common.The

work was accomplished through adherence to guidelines that allowed these researchers to

progress from point A to point Z while remaining confident that they were on the trail of

finding (what they hoped was) an adequate answer to the questions they had posed.

Their methods and their conclusions are not helter-skelter because of one important

practice: They share the same general philosophy regarding how questions about human

behavior should be answered. In addition, for scientists to be able to trust their colleagues,

in the sense of having confidence in the results produced by their studies, these scientists

must have something in common besides good intentions. As it turns out, what they share

is a standard sequence of steps in formulating and answering a question.

When you read in a journal article that Method A is more effective than Method B

for improving retention or memory, you can be pretty sure that the steps described next

were followed, in one form or another. Because there is agreement about the general

method used to answer the question, the results of this comparison of Method A and

Method B can be applied to the next study. That study would perhaps investigate

variations of Method A and how and why they work. The research efforts of developmental

psychologists, gerontologists (specialists in aging), linguists, and experts in

higher education all depend on the integrity of the process.

Figure 1.1 shows a set of such steps as part of a model of scientific inquiry. The goal

of this model is to find the truth (whatever that means) or, in other words, to use a

scientific method that results in a reasonable and sound answer to important

questions that will further our understanding of human behavior.

An interesting and timely topic, the effects of using social media on adolescents’

social skills, will be used as an example of the different steps followed in this model.

Asking the Question

Remember the story of The Wizard of Oz? When Dorothy realized her need to get to the

Emerald City, she asked Glinda, the good witch, “But where do I begin?” Glinda’s response,

“Most people begin at the beginning, my dear,” is the case in almost any scientific endeavor.

Our first and most important step is asking a question (I wonder what would

happen if . . . ?) or identifying a need (We have to find a way to . . . ) that arises as the

result of curiosity, and to which it becomes necessary to find an answer. For example, you

might be curious about how the use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook affects

relationships between children and their peers. You also might feel an urgency to find

out how to use various types of media most effectively for educating children and adults

about the dangers of using drugs.

Such questions are informally stated and often are intended as a source of discussion

and stimulation about what direction the specific research topic should take. Where do such

questions come from? They rarely come from the confines of a classroom or a laboratory.

Rather, questions spring (in the fullest sense of the word) from our imagination and our own

experiences, enriched by the worlds of science, art, music, and literature. It is no coincidence

that many works of fiction (including science fiction) have a basis in fact. The truly creative

scientist is always thinking about everything from solutions to existing questions to the

next important question to ask. When Louis Pasteur said that chance favors the prepared

mind, he was really saying, “Take advantage of all the experiences you can, both in and out

of school.” Only then can you be well prepared to recognize the importance of certain events,

which will act as a stimulus for more rigorous research activity.

Questions can be as broad as inquiring about the effects of social media on peer

groups, or as specific as the relationship between the content of social media transactions

and acceptance by peers. Whatever their content or depth of inquiry, questions are the

first step in any scientific endeavor.

6 Exploring Research

Asking the Question

Identifying the Important Factors

Formulating a Hypothesis

Collecting Relevant Information

Testing the Hypothesis

Working with the Hypothesis

Reconsidering the Theory

Asking New Questions

Figure 1.1 The steps in the research process, wherein each step sets the stage for the next.

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Exploring Research, Eighth Edition, by Neil J. Salkind. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2012 by Pearson E

Chapter 1: The Role and Importance of Research 7

Identifying the Important Factors

Once the question has been asked, the next step is to identify the factors that have to be

examined to answer the question. Such factors might range from the simplest, such as

an adolescent’s age or socioeconomic status, to more complicated measures, such as the

daily number of face-to-face interactions.

For example, the following list of factors have been investigated over the

past 10 years by various researchers who have been interested in the effects of social

media:

• age and gender of the adolescent,

• ethnicity,

• level of family education,

• access to types of social media,

• number of self-identified close friends,

• parental attitude toward social media,

• family configuration,

• family communication patterns.

And these are only ten of hundreds of factors and associated topics that could be

explored. But of all the factors that could be important and that could help us to understand

more about the effects of social media, which ones should be selected as a focus?

In general, you should select factors that

• have not been investigated before,

• will contribute to the understanding of the question you are asking,

• are available to investigate,

• hold some interest for you personally or professionally,

• lead to another question.

It is hard enough to define the nature of the problem you want to study (see Chapter 3)

let alone generate questions that lead to more questions, but once you begin the journey

of becoming a scientist, you are a member of an elite group who has the responsibility to

contribute to the scientific literature not only by what you do but also by what you see

that needs to be done.

Formulating a Hypothesis

When asked what she thought a hypothesis was, a 9-year-old girl said it best: “An educated

guess.” A hypothesis results when the questions are transformed into statements that

express the relationships between variables such as an “if . . . then” statement.

For example, if the question is, “What effects does using Facebook have on the

development of friendships?” then the hypothesis could be, adolescents who use

Facebook as their primary means of maintaining social contact have fewer close friends.

Several characteristics make some hypotheses better than others, and we will talk about

those in Chapter 2.

For now, you should realize that a hypothesis is an objective extension of the question

that was originally posed. Although all questions might not be answerable because of the

way in which they are posed—which is fine for the question stage—a good hypothesis

poses a question in a testable form. Good questions lead to good hypotheses, which in turn

lead to good studies.

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Exploring Research,

Collecting Relevant Information

Hypotheses should posit a clear relationship between different factors, such as a

correlation between number of followers on Twitter and quality of social skills. That is

the purpose of the hypothesis. Once a hypothesis is formulated, the next step is the

collection of information or empirical data that will confirm or refute the hypothesis.

So, if you are interested in whether or not participating in social media has an impact

on adolescent’s social skills, the kinds of data that will allow the hypothesis to be

tested must be collected.

For example, you might collect two types of data to test the hypothesis mentioned in

the previous paragraph. The first might be the number of friends an adolescent might

have. The second might be the quality of those relationships.

An important point about testing hypotheses is that you set out to test them, not to

prove them. As a good scientist, you should be intent on collecting data that reveal as

much of the truth about the world as is possible and letting the chips fall where they

may, whether you agree or disagree with the outcomes. Setting out to prove a hypothesis

can place scientists in the unattractive position of biasing the methods for collecting

data or the way in which study results are interpreted. If bias occurs, then the entire

sequence of steps can fall apart. Besides, there’s really no being “wrong” in science. Not

having a hypothesis supported means only that there are additional questions to ask or

that those which were asked should be reformulated. That is the beauty of good

science—there is always another question to ask on the same topic—one that can shed

just a bit more light. And who knows? That bit more light might be the tipping point or

just the amount needed to uncover an entirely new and significant finding.

Testing the Hypothesis

Is it enough simply to collect data that relate to the phenomena being studied? Not

quite. What if you have finished collecting data and find that adolescents who spend

more than 10 hours a week involved in social media have 50% fewer qualitatively “good”

relationships with peers than those who spend less than 10 hours? What would your

conclusion be?

On one hand, you could say the adolescents who used social media more than

10 hours per week were one-half as sociable as other adolescents or had one-half the

quality of relationships of the children who used social media less than 10 hours per

week. On the other hand, you might argue that the difference between the two groups of

adolescents is too large enough for you to reach any conclusion. You might conclude that

in order for a statement about social media use and quality of friendships, you would

have to have much greater differences in the quality of relationships.

Say hello to inferential statistics (see Chapter 8 for more), a set of tools that allows

researchers to separate the effects of an isolated factor (such as time spent on

Facebook) from differences between groups that might be owing to some other factor or

to nothing other than chance. Yes, luck, fate, destiny, the wheels of fortune, or

whatever you want to call what you cannot control, sometimes can be responsible for

differences between groups.

For example, what if some of the adolescents participating in your study went to

some kind of social function where there was a particularly strong emphasis on social

media methods of communicating such as texting. Or, what if one of the adolescents

just was afraid to truthfully report how much time he or she spent on Facebook during

study time?

The job of all the tools that researchers have at their disposal (and the ones you will

learn about throughout Exploring Research) is to help you separate the effects of the

Chapter 1: The Role and Importance of Research 9

factors being studied (such as amount of time spent on Facebook) from other unrelated

factors (such as the number of years a family has lived at its current address). What

these tools allow researchers to do is assign a probability level to an outcome so that you

can decide whether what you see is really due to what you think it is due to or something

else which you leave for the next study.

Working with the Hypothesis

Once you have collected the required data and have tested the hypothesis, as a good

scientist you can sit down, put up your feet, look intellectual, and examine the results.

The results may confirm or refute the hypothesis. In either case, it is off to the races.

If the data confirm your hypothesis, then the importance of the factors that were

hypothesized to be related and conceptually important were borne out and you can go on

your merry way while the next scientific experiment is being planned. If the hypothesis

is not confirmed, it may very well be a time for learning something that was not known

previously. In the example used earlier, it may mean that involvement in social media

has no impact on social skills or social relationships. Although the researcher might be a

bit disappointed that the initial hunch (formally called a hypothesis) was not supported,

the results of a well-run study always provide valuable information, regardless of

the outcome.

Reconsidering the Theory

Finally, it is time to take stock and relate all these research efforts to what guides our

work in the first place: theory. Earlier in this chapter, a theory was defined as a set of

statements that predict things that will occur in the future and explain things that have

occurred in the past. But the very nature of theories is that they can be modified

according to the results of research based on the same assumptions on which the theory

is based.

For example, a particular approach to understanding the development of children

and adults is known as social learning theory, which places special importance on the

role of modeling and vicarious, or indirect, learning. According to this theory, exposure to

aggressive behavior would lead to aggressive behavior once the environment contains

the same kinds of cues and motivation that were present when the initial aggressive

model (such as particularly unkind Facebook postings) was observed.

If the hypothesis that observing such models increases lack of civility is confirmed,

then another building block, or piece of evidence, has been added to the house called

social learning theory. Good scientists are always trying to see what type of brick (new

information) fits where, or if it fits at all. In this way, new knowledge can change or

modify the way the theory appears and what it has to say about human behavior.

Consequently, new questions might be generated from the theory that will help

contribute further to the way in which the house is structured.

Asking New Questions

In any case, the last step in this simple model of scientific inquiry is to ask a new

question. It might be a simple variation on a theme (Do males use social media in a

different way than females?) or a refinement of the original question (How might the use

of social media differentially affect the social relationships of males and females. trail to answering the original question. You just might be at a different place than you

thought or intended to be.

TEST YOURSELF

Hypothesis plays a very important role in scientific research, with one of them being the

objective testing of a particular question that a scientist might want to ask. What are some

of the factors that might get in the way of the scientist remaining objective and what

impact might that have on a fair test of the hypothesis of interest? What is the danger of

not being aware of these biases?

Different Types of Research

By now, you have a good idea what research is and how the research process works. Now

it is time to turn your attention to a description and examples of different types of

research methods and the type of questions posed by them.

The types of research methods that will be discussed differ primarily on three

dimensions: (1) the nature of the question asked, (2) the method used to answer it, and

(3) the degree of precision the method brings to answering the question. One way in

which these methods do not necessarily differ, however, is in the content or the focus of

the research.

In other words, if you are interested in the effects of the use of social media on

adolescents’ friendships, your research may be experimental, where you artificially

restrict access to social media and look at friendship outcomes, or nonexperimental, where

you survey a group of adolescents to determine the frequency of use of social media tools.

A summary of the two general categories of research methods (nonexperimental

versus experimental), which will be discussed in this volume, is shown in Table 1.1. This

table illustrates the purpose of each category, the time frame that each encompasses, the

degree of control the different method has over competing factors, “code” words that

appear in research articles that can tip you off as to the type of research being

conducted, and an example of each. Chapters 9–12 discuss in greater detail each of these

research methods.

There is one very important point to keep in mind when discussing different

methods used in research. As often as not, as research becomes more sophisticated and

researchers (like you in the future) become better trained, there will be increased

reliance on mixed methods models, where both experimental and nonexperimental

methods are combined. Some researchers feel that this type of approach lacks clarity

and precision, but others feel it is the best way to look at a phenomenon of interest from

a variety of perspectives and thereby be more informative.

Nonexperimental Research

Nonexperimental research includes a variety of different methods that describe

relationships between variables. The important distinction between nonexperimental

methods and the others you will learn about later is that nonexperimental research

methods do not set out, nor can they test, any causal relationships between variables.

For example, if you wanted to survey the social media–using behavior of adolescents,

you could do so by having them maintain a diary in which they record what tools they use and for how long. This descriptive study provides information about the content of their online

behaviors but tells you little about why they may do what they do. In this type of a

research endeavor, you are not trying to understand the motivation for using what

online tools are used nor are you trying to manipulate their use or content of the

communication or any other outcome. This is nonexperimental in nature because no

cause-and-effect relationships of any type are being hypothesized or investigated.

Nonexperimental research methods that will be covered in this volume are descriptive,

correlational, and qualitative. Descriptive and correlational methods will be

covered in Chapter 9, and qualitative methods will be discussed in Chapter 10. The

following is a brief overview of each.

Descriptive Research

Descriptive research describes the characteristics of an existing phenomenon. The

every 10-year U.S. Census is an example of descriptive research as is any survey that

assesses the current status of anything from the number of faucets in a house to the

number of adults over 60 years of age who have grandchildren.

What can be done with this information? First, it provides a broad picture of a

phenomenon you might be interested in exploring. For example, if you are interested in

learning more about the reading process in children, you might want to consult The

Reading Report Card (at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/). This annual

publication summarizes information about the reading achievement of children ages 9,

13, and 17 years. Or you might want to consult a publication of the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (at http://www.cdc.

gov/mmwr/), to determine the current incidence of measles cases in the Midwest, or the

Bureau of Labor Statistics (at http://www.bls.gov/) to determine the current unemployment

rate and the number of working single parents who have children under age 5

(about 60%). If you want to know it, there is a place to find it. Descriptive research

demands this type of information.

In another example, Eleanor Hanna, Hsiao-ye Yi, Mary Dufour, and Christine

Whitmore (2001) examined the relationship of early smoking to alcohol use, depression,

and drug use in adolescence. They used descriptive statistics and other statistical

techniques to find that in comparison with those who never smoked, or those who simply

experimented, early smokers were those most likely to use alcohol and other drugs as

well as have school problems and early sexual experiences culminating in pregnancy.

Descriptive research can stand on its own, but it can also serve as a basis for other

types of research in that a group’s characteristics often need to be described before the

meaningfulness of any differences can be addressed. And almost always descriptive data

is collected but as the first step of many on the way to a more complex study. Want to

describe an outcome? Learn about descriptive techniques.

Correlational Research

Descriptive and historical research provide a picture of events that are currently

happening or have occurred in the past. Researchers often want to go beyond mere

description and begin discussing the relationship that certain events might have to one

another. The most likely type of research to answer questions about the relationship

among variables or events is called correlational research.

What correlational research does, which neither descriptive nor historical

research does, is to provide some indication as to how two or more things are related to

one another or, in effect, what they share or have in common, or how well a specific

outcome might be predicted by one or more pieces of information.

Correlational research uses a numerical index called the correlation coefficient

(see Chapter 9 for a complete discussion) as a measure of the strength of this relationship.

Most correlational studies report such an index when available.

12 Exploring Research

Descriptive research

focuses on events that

occur in the present.

Correlational research

examines the

relationship between

variables.

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Exploring Research, Eighth Edition, by Neil J. Salkind. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc

Chapter 1: The Role and Importance of Research 13

If you were interested in finding out the relationship between the number of hours

that first-year students spend studying and their grade-point averages, then you would

be doing correlational research, because you are interested in the relationship between

these two variables. If you were interested in finding out the best set of predictors of

success in graduate school, you would be doing a type of correlational research that

includes prediction.

For example, in a study of culture, obesity stereotypes, self-esteem, and the “thin

ideal,” Klaczynski, Goold, and Mudry (2004) examined the relationships among negative

stereotypes of obesity, and other variables such as perceptions of the causes of obesity

and of control over weight and self-esteem. They found a negative correlation between

beliefs in control over one’s weight and self-esteem.

One of the most important points about correlational research is that while it

examines relationships between variables, it in no way implies that one causes

changes in the other. In other words, correlation and prediction examine associations

but not causal relationships, wherein a change in one factor directly influences a

change in another.

For example, it is a well-established fact that as the crime rate in a community

increases, so does the level of ice cream consumption! What’s going on? Certainly, no

rational person would conclude that the two are causally related such that if ice cream

were banned, no more crimes would occur. Rather, another variable, temperature, better

explains the increased ice cream consumption and the increased crime rate (both rise

when it gets warm). It might seem ridiculous that people would identify causality just

because events are related, but you do not have to read far in the daily newspaper to

discover that politicians can reach just such unwise conclusions.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research methods (see Chapter 10) are placed in this general category

of nonexperimental methods because they do not directly test for cause and effect

and, for the most part, follow an entirely different paradigm than the experimental

model.

The general purpose of qualitative research methods is to examine human behavior

in the social, cultural, and political contexts in which they occur. This is done

through a variety of tools, such as interviews, historical methods, case studies, and

ethnography, and it usually results in qualitative (or nonnumerical) primary data. In

other words, the qualitative researcher is more (but not only) interested in the contents

of an interviewee’s speech than in the number of times (frequency) a particular

comment is made.

Qualitative research is relatively new to the social and behavioral sciences and, to a

large extent, its increasing popularity is due to a degree of dissatisfaction with other

available research methods. Some scientists feel that the traditional experimental

model is too restrictive and narrow, preventing underlying and important factors and

relationships from being revealed. What’s so valuable about this set of tools is that it

allows you to answer a whole new set of questions in a whole new way.

Experimental Research

You already know that correlational research can help to establish the presence of a

relationship among variables, but it does not provide any reason to believe that

variables are causally related to one another. How does one find out if characteristics,

behaviors, or events are related in such a way that the relationship is a causal one?

Two types of research can answer that question: true experimental research and quasiexperimental

research.

Qualitative research

studies phenomena

within the social and

cultural context in

which they occur.

Experimental research

examines the causeand-

effect relationship

between variables.

ISBN 1-269-62776-7

Exploring Research,

True Experimental Research

In the true experimental research method, participants are assigned to groups

based on some criterion, often called the treatment variable or treatment condition.

For example, let us say that you are interested in comparing the effects of two

different techniques for reducing obsessive-compulsive behavior in adults. The first

technique includes behavioral therapy, and the second one does not. Once adults are

assigned to groups and the programs are completed, you will want to look for any

differences between the two groups with regard to the effects of the therapy on the

frequency of obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Because the nature of the groups is

determined by the researcher, the researcher has complete control over the factors to

which the adults are exposed.

This is the ideal model for establishing a cause-and-effect relationship because the

researcher has clearly defined the possible cause (if indeed it results in some effect) and

can keep very close tabs on what is happening. Most important, however, the researcher

has complete control over the treatment.

In a quasi-experimental study, the researcher does not have such a high degree of

control because people have already been indirectly assigned to those groups (e.g., social

class, type of abuse, gender, and type of injury) for which you are testing the effects.

The distinction between experimental and other methods of research boils down

to a matter of control. True experimental research designs (discussed in Chapter 11)

isolate and control all the factors that could be responsible for any effects except the

one of most interest.

For example, Fleming, Klein, and Corter (1992) examined the effects of participation

in a social support group on depression, maternal attitudes, and behavior in new

mothers. As part of the experimental design, the researchers divided 142 mothers into

three groups. Group 1 received the intervention, Group 2 received the no-intervention

condition, and Group 3 received a special group-by-mail intervention. The key point here

is the manipulation (the key word in experimental designs) of the condition for each of

the three groups. This research is true experimental because the researchers

determined the nature of the treatment and who is assigned to each group. As you will

learn, in a quasi-experimental study, the researcher has no control over the origin of

group membership (male or female, black or white, etc.). The primary difference between

quasi-experimental and true experimental research is that in the former, subjects are

preassigned to groups. It’s that simple.

Quasi-Experimental Research

In quasi-experimental research, participants are preassigned to groups based on

some predetermined characteristic or quality. Differences in gender, race, age, grade in

school, neighborhood of residence, type of job, and even experiences are examples. These

group assignments have already taken place before the experiment begins, and the

researcher has no control over who is assigned to which group.

Let us say that you are interested in examining voting patterns as a function of

neighborhood. You cannot change the neighborhood people live in, but you can use the

quasi-experimental method to establish a causal link between residence and voting

patterns. In other words, if you find that voting pattern and residence are related, then

you can say with some degree of confidence (but not as much as with an experimental

study) that there is a causal relationship between where one resides and how one votes.

The most important use of the quasi-experimental method occurs where researchers

cannot, in good conscience, assign people to groups and test the effects of group

membership on some other outcome. For example, researchers who are interested inChapter 1: The Role and Importance of Research 15

reducing the impact of child abuse cannot “create” groups of abusers, but rather have to

look at already established groups of people who are abusive. That’s exactly what Mark

Chaffin and his colleagues (2004) did when they assigned already (and that’s the key

word) physically abusive parents to one of three intervention conditions. They found a

reduction in abusive behavior by parents who were assigned to parent–child interaction

therapy.

Quasi-experimental research is also called post hoc, or after the fact, research

because the actual research takes place after the assignment of groups (e.g., abusive

versus nonabusive, employed versus unemployed, malnourished versus nonmalnourished,

and male versus female). Because assignment has already taken place, the

researcher has a high degree, but not the highest degree, of control over the cause of

whatever effects are being examined. For the highest degree of control to occur, the true

experimental model must be followed.

TEST YOURSELF

We have briefly defined and discussed the different research methods that you will learn

about later in Exploring Research in much greater detail. For now, answer this question.

What determines the research method that a scientist should use to answer a question or

test a hypothesis? Which research method described here best lends itself to questions you

want answered?

What Research Method to Use When?

This is a beginning course and no one would expect you to be able to identify what type

of research method was used in a particular study—at least not yet.You may have a very

good idea if you understand what you just read about nonexperimental and

experimental research methods, but it takes some experience to become really good

at the identification process.

So, here is a little jump start in the form of a “cheat” sheet (shown in Figure 1.2).

This is not a substitute for learning how to distinguish nonexperimental from

experimental research designs—it’s just a good way to get started and a bit of a help

when you need it. Note that an alternative to any nonexperimental method is a

qualitative approach (which is not shown in Figure 1.2).

Basic Research Versus Applied Research

Sometimes in the research world, distinctions must be made not only about the type of

research but also about the most general category into which the implications or utility

of the research might fall. This is where the distinction between basic and applied

research comes in. But beware! This distinction is sometimes used as a convenient way

to classify research activity rather than to shed light on the intent or purpose of the

researcher and the importance of the study.

The most basic distinction between the two types of research is that basic

research (sometimes called pure research) is research that has no immediate

application at the time it is completed, whereas applied research does. If this appears

to be a somewhat ambiguous distinction, it is, because almost all basic research

eventually results in some worthwhile application over the long term. In fact, the once easy distinction between the two is slowly disappearing. missions during the 1960s and 1970s, $6 were returned in economic impact. Data from

basic research that hypothesizes a relationship between Alzheimer’s disease in older

people and Down’s syndrome (a genetic disorder) in younger people could eventually

prove to be the critical finding that leads to a cure for both conditions. Another

example: Who cares if some children have a more difficult time than others do in

distinguishing between two very similar stimuli? You do, if you want to teach these

children how to read. Many different reading programs have grown directly from such

basic research efforts.

Never judge the quality of either the finished product or the worth of supporting a

research project by branding it as basic or applied research. Rather, look closely at its

content and judge it on its merit. This approach obviously has been used, because more

and more reports about basic research (at one time beyond the interests of everyday

practitioners) appear in such practitioner-oriented professional journals as Phi Delta

Kappan and the APA Monitor, as well as the Sunday New York Times Magazine,

Newsweek, Science News, and American Scientist. And the results of applied research

are those that policy makers look to when formulating position papers.

TEST YOURSELF

Why are both basic and applied research essential to the scientific community as well as to

the public community that it serves? What do you think an educated or informed citizen

should know about how the research process works? What five questions might he or she

be able to answer?

16 Exploring Research

Are you

looking

for

differences

between

groups?

Are you studying

the relationship

between

variables (but not the

effects

of one on the other)?

Are the participants

preassigned to groups?

Descriptive

Research

Correlational

Research

Time to go back Quasi-experimental True-experimental

and reconsider

the question

you are asking

Historical

Research

Are you

studying

events that

primarily

occur in the

present?

Are you

studying

events that

occurred in

the

past?

No Yes

Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No

Experimental Research

Nonexperimental Research

Figure 1.2 Research design “cheat” sheet.

ISBN 1-269-62776-7

Exploring Research, Eighth Edition, by Neil J. Salkind. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2012 by