Do you ever "people-watch"? Do you ever wonder why people behave the way they do? Do you ever come up with explanations for people's behavior?
If you answered "yes" to these questions, you have already taken the initial steps for conducting research in psychology. That you are enrolled in an introductory psychology course suggests you are interested in learning more about why people think and behave the way they do.
But simply people-watching and coming up with our own explanations for people's behavior isn't research; it's not scientific. In this "Student as Researcher" component of your psychology course, you will learn the basic steps for conducting psychological research. As you learn about research, you will also learn how to evaluate psychological research.
Reports of psychological research are all around us-we learn about research findings in the news, in our magazines, and on the Internet. Throughout this Student as Researcher guide, you'll find many websites for more information. For example, for psychology news, try these websites:
http://www.apa.org/monitorhttp://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/http://psych.hanover.edu/Research/exponnet.htmlThe public seems hungry to know more about psychology; after all, psychology is about us. Much of what we learn from the media has direct relevance for our own lives. For example, we may learn about the effects of divorce on children (http://mentalhelp.net), how to communicate with elderly relatives who have Alzheimer's (http://www.alzheimers.org), learn how to forgive (http://www.forgiving.org), and so on. But how do we separate the good research from the bad research? How do we know whether to accept what we read or hear as true? What if scientists seem to disagree about research findings?
How we answer these questions depends on understanding the basic steps of the research process. Psychological research, like all scientific research, uses the scientific method. Therefore, as we start these Student as Researcher exercises, we will first answer the question, what is the scientific method?
