UAPP 2053 Organizational Psychology - Lecture 2 Research Method in I/O Psychology

UAPP 2053 Organizational Psychology

Lecture 2 Research Method in I/O Psychology

Objectives

- Why research method is important?

- Goals of scientific method

- Key terms of scientific method

- Research design

Why Research Method Is Important?

- Imagine that you are I/O psychologist in a company. You are assigned the task of determining if a new training program is effective in producing better performance in employee.

- How you want to find out if the training works?

- Psychology is a scientific study of human behavior and mental processes…thus…

- Science, at a basic level attempts to answer questions (such as “why are we aggressive”) through careful observation and collection of data.

- These answers can then (at a more complex or higher level) be used to further our knowledge of us and our world, as well as help us predict subsequent events and behavior.

- But, this requires a systematic/universal way of collecting and understanding data – other wise there is chaos.

- How do we find scientific truth? The scientific method is NOT perfect, but it is the best method available today.

- To use the scientific method, all topics of study must have the following criteria:

1) Must be testable (e.g. can you test the existence of god?)

2) Must be falsifiable – easy to prove anything true (depends on situation), but systematically demonstrating a subject matter to be false is quite difficult (e.g. can you prove that god does not exist?)

Goals of Scientific Method

1) Description – the citing of the observable characteristics of an event, object, or individual. Helps us to be systematic and consistent.

· This stage sets the stage for more formal stages – here we acquire our topic of study and begin to transform it from a general concept or idea into a specific, testable construct.

· Operational Definitions – the definition of behaviors or qualities in terms of how they are to be measured. Some books define it as the description of… the actions or operations that will be made to measure or control a variable.

· Examples:

Ø How do you define job satisfaction, absence, etc. in a way that is testable and falsifiable?

2) Prediction – here we formulate testable predictions or HYPOTHESES about behavior (specifically, about our variables).

· A hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in your study.

· For example, one may hypothesize that as workload increases, job performance decreases.

· Hypotheses are usually based on THEORIES – statements which summarize and explain research findings.

· A theory is a well-established principle that has been developed to explain some aspect of the natural word.

3) Select Methodology & Design – choose the most appropriate research strategy for empirically addressing your hypotheses.

4) Control – method of eliminating all unwanted factors that may effect what we are attempting to study (we will address in more detail later).

5) Collect Data – although the book is a little redundant and does not differentiate well between this stage and selecting the design and method, data collection is simply the execution and implementation of your research design.

6) Analyze & Interpret the Data – use of statistical procedures to determine the mathematical and scientific importance (not the “actual” importance or meaningfulness­) of the data. Were the differences between the groups/conditions large enough to be meaningful (not due to chance)?

7) Report/Communicate the Findings – Psychology is a science that is based on sharing – finding answers to questions is meaningless (to everyone except the scientist) unless that information can be shared with others. We do this through publications in scientific journals, books, presentations, lectures, etc.

Key Terms of Scientific Method

1) Variable – any measurable condition, event, characteristic, or behavior that can be controlled or observed in a study.

· Independent Variable (IV) – the variable that is manipulated by the researcher to see how it affects the dependent variable.

· Dependent Variable (DV) – the behavior or response outcome that the researcher measures, which is hoped to have been affected by the IV.

2) Groups (of subjects/participants) in an experiment – experimental vs control

· Experimental group – group exposed to the IV in an experiment.

· Control group – group does not exposed to IV. This does not mean that this group is not exposed to anything, though.

· For example, in a drug study, it is wise to have an experimental group (gets the drug), a placebo control group (receives a drug exactly like the experimental drug, but without any active ingredients), and a no-placebo control group (they get no drug…nothing).

· Both groups must be treated EXACTLY the same except for the IV.

3) Experimenter Bias – if the researcher (or anyone on the research team) acts differently towards those in one group it may influence participants’ behaviors and thus alter the findings. This usually not done on purpose, but just knowing what group a participant is in may be enough to change the way we behave toward our participants.

4) Participant Bias (Demand Characteristics) – participants may act in ways they believe correspond to what the researcher is looking for. Thus, the participant may not act in a natural way.

5) Validity – does the test measure what we want it to measure? If yes, then it is valid.

· For example – does a stress inventory/test actually measure the amount of stress in a person’s life and not something else?

6) Reliability – is the test consistent? If we get same results over and over, then reliable.

· For example – an IQ test – probably won’t change if you take it several times. Thus, if it produces the same (or very, very similar) results each time it is taken, then it is reliable.

· However, a test can be reliable without being valid, so we must be careful.

· For example – the heavier your head, the smarter you are. If I weighed your head at the same time each day, once a day, for a week it would be virtually the same weight each day. This means that the test is reliable. But, do you think this test is valid (that is indeed measures your level of “smartness”)? Probably NOT, and therefore, it is not valid.

Research Design

- Causal Research

· When most people think of scientific experimentation, research on cause and effect is most often brought to mind.

· Experiments on causal relationships investigate the effect of one or more variables on one or more outcome variables. This type of research also determines if one variable causes another variable to occur or change.

- Descriptive Research

· Descriptive research seeks to depict what already exists in a group or population. The description is used for frequencies, averages and other statistical calculations.

- Relational Research

· A study that investigates the connection between two or more variables is considered relational research. The variables that are compared are generally already present in the group or population.