Like any scientific research psychological enquiry has the following goals: description, prediction, explanation and control of behaviour, and application of knowledge so generated in an objective manner. Let us try to understand the meaning of these terms.
Description:
In a psychological study, we attempt to describe a behaviour or a phenomenon as accurately as possible. This helps in distinguishing a particular behaviour from other behaviours. For instance, the researcher may be interested in observing study habits among students. Study habits may consist of diverse range of behaviours, such as attending all the classes regularly, submitting assignments on time, planning the study schedule, studying according to the set schedule, revising the work on a daily basis.
Prediction:
The second goal of scientific enquiry is prediction of behaviour. Such as, on the basis of study a researcher is able to establish a positive relationship between the amount of study time and achievement in different subjects. Later if we come to know that a particular child devotes more time for study, we can predict that the child is likely to get good marks in the examination.
Explanation:
The third goal of psychological enquiry is to know the
causal factors or determinants of behaviour. Psychologists are primarily interested in knowing the factors that make behaviour occur. Also, what are the conditions under which a particular behaviour does not occur. For example, what makes some children more attentive in the class? Why some children devote less time for study as compared to others ? Thus, this goal is concerned with identifying the determinants or antecedent conditions (i.e., conditions that led to the particular behaviour) of the behaviour being studied.
Control refers to three things:
making a particular behaviour happen,reducing it, or enhancing it. For example: We can allow the number of hours devoted to study to be the same or we can reduce them or there may be an increase in the study hours. The change brought about in behaviour by psychological treatment in terms of therapy in persons, is a good example of control.
Application:
The final goal of the scientific enquiry is to bring out positive changes in the lives of people. Psychological research is conducted to solve problems in various settings. Because of these efforts the quality of life of people is a major concern of psychologists. For example, applications of yoga and meditation help to reduce stress and increase efficiency. Scientific enquiry is also conducted to develop new theories or constructs, which leads to further research.
Steps in conducting Scientific Research:
Science is defined by 'how' it investigates. The scientific method attempts to study a particular event or phenomenon in an objective, systematic and testable manners. The objectivity refers to the fact that if two or more persons independently study a particular event, both of them, to a great extent, should arrive at the same conclusion.
The second characteristic of scientific research is that it follows systematic procedure or steps of investigation. It includes the following steps conceptualization of a problem, collection of data, drawing conclusions, and revising research conclusions and theory.
Methods:
Steps in Conducting Scientific Enquiry
All science is an attempt to describe and explain objects and events in the real world. Scientists observe something, propose theories to explain it and then test their theories. Because the focus of the science is something in the real world, the basic test of any scientific proposition is 'observation'.
They look to see whether things happen the way the theories claim they should. The problems psychologists face and how they solve them can be understood with the help of examples such as why do students feel anxious during examination and perform poorly. Psychologists refer to anxiety and poor performance as variables and find out the relationship between the two. Following are the methods used in psychology to accomplish their goals in finding the answers to differences in behaviour.
1. Introspection / Self observation:
To understand how basic sensations combine to produce our perception of the world, Wilhelm Wundt and others used a procedure called introspection to study the mind. It is 'self observation' / looking within', to report what is going on in one's mind and how one feels about it. For example, people were presented with a stimulus, such as a bright coloured object, or a word printed on a card.
They were asked to describe it in their own words and in as much detail as they could, what they were experiencing. Wundt believed that by analyzing the report, in terms of their reactions, psychologists could come to a better understanding of the structure of the mind.
Introspection is not a casual report but a disciplined description of experiences. It is an effective method of studying phenomena that cannot be experimented upon.
The main purpose here is to find out what exactly happens to the human mind, when it reacts to the outside world. Here we are concerned with the nature of the experience itself and the laws of the mental processes that govern self examination.
The goal of introspection is to learn about the basic building blocks of experience and the principles by which they combine to give us our everyday consciousness. Thus, introspection deals with the contents of consciousness.
Advantages:
1. It was a good beginning to study experiences.
2. Mental activities that cannot be observed or experimented upon can be studied through introspection.
3. It can be used along with other methods to provide supplementary data.
4. The best way of gaining knowledge of mental process is by looking within oneself.
5. Our mind is our only means of interpreting thoughts at the given moment.
6. Introspection leads the way for better actions.
Chapter-2 Methods of study in Psychology
Disadvantages
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1. Introspection deals with experiences, but experiences are not consistent. Fluctuations of the mind question the authenticity of introspection.
2. The object that causes experience would be an obstacle in the observation and in reporting of the experience itself. For example, if a person is angry, he has to examine his own condition and experience it. He also has to attend to the person with whom he is angry. In doing so, the mind withdraws from the object, and the anger disappears. Introspection defeats its purpose here. Attention is divided into two parts. One is the mental operation itself, which is to be observed and the other is the object to which the mental operation is directed.
3. Extreme emotions do not give way for introspection e.g., when one is very sad/ happy one cannot stop to think about the feeling.
4. Verbalizing the experience and conveying it effectively, to another person is difficult.
5. Certain experiences and feelings may not find the right expression through language.
6. There are experiences that cannot be studied through introspection. mainly in the area of child psychology, abnormal psychology, and animal psychology
7. The subject may fake experiences and their reports of feelings cannot be verified. There are no ways that an outside observer could confirm the accuracy of other's introspection.
8. History remembers Wundt's research strategy of introspection as complicated and unwieldy. The problem that experimental psychologists encountered was in resolving disagreements. Theoretically, the immediate experience of all individuals is composed of the same elements and introspection by different individuals should yield the same results. What actually happened in practice, however, was disagreement, which questioned Wundt's research. Ultimately, this early approach to psychology was found to be unscientific.
9. In reality, however, it is not possible to introspect on an experience as and when it occurs. It is more of a retrospection that is generally done, when we start analyzing the actions and behavior that took place during the experience, much after the experience is over.
Retrospection:
It is the report of a conscious experience that has already occurred. It is the mental process of reliving the incidents of the day. An average individual passing through the experiences of daily life is partly aware of the significance of passing events. Valuable lessons generally go unnoticed. Sometimes we may fail to observe, discriminate and be thoughtful.
As a result we are deprived of conscious experience of action. By means of retrospection, we may impartially view the incidents that have already occurred. It is possible to see in greater perspective the intimate relationship between cause and effect.
Hence, retrospection enriches life, resulting in greater thoroughness in thinking and feeling. In retrospection, a person may set himself as a sort of judge over his own actions. He reviews the incidents and events of the day and attempts to rationalize each of them. He subjects his thoughts and emotions to a series of mental rewards and punishments. He regrets the mistakes. he has made and acknowledges his own commendable accomplishments.
If properly used, this method is advantageous for the individual in knowing himself. The disadvantage is that it does not offer itself to scientific study of behaviour.
Such drawbacks led to the evolution of new approaches, which largely replaced both introspection and retrospection.
2. Objective observation:
Observation is a very powerful tool of psychological enquiry. It is an effective method of describing behaviour. In our daily life, we remain busy with observing numerous things throughout the day. Many times, we do not take notice of what we are seeing or what we have seen. We see but we do not observe, We remain aware of only a few things that we see daily. A scientific observation differs from day-to-day observation in many respects. These are:
(a) Selection:
Psychologists do not observe all the behaviour that they encounter. Rather they select a particular behaviour for observation. For example we may be interested in knowing how children studying in Class XI spend their time in school. Two things are possible at this stage. As researchers we might think. that we have a fairly good idea about what happens in school. We may prepare a list of activities and go to the school with a view of finding out their occurrences. Alternatively we might think that we do not know what happens in the school and by our observation we would like to discover it.
(b) Recording:
While observing, a researcher records the selected behaviour using different means, such as marking tallies for the already identified behaviour whenever they occur, taking notes, describing each activity in greater detail, using short hand or symbols, photographs, video recording etc.,
(c) Analysis of Data After the observations have been made. psychologists analyse whatever they have recorded with a view to derive some meaning out of it.
It is important to know that making good observation is a skill. A good observer knows what s/he is looking for, whom s/ he wants to observe, when and where the observation needs to be made, in what form the observation will be recorded and what methods will be used to analyse the observed behaviour.
Types of observation:-
Observation can be of the following types:-
(a) Naturalistic Vs. controlled observation. When observations are done in a natural or real life settings (in the above example, it was a school in which observation was made), it is called naturalistic observation. In this case the observer makes no effort to control or manipulate the situation for making an observation.
This type of observation is conducted in hospitals, homes, schools, day care centers, etc., However, many a times we may need to control certain. factors that determine behaviour as they are not the focus of our study.
For this reason, many of the studies in psychology are conducted in the laboratory which is called controlled observation or systematic observation. This method of observation can be applied to many practical problems for example, studying public opinion and the factors influencing it, predicting success in college and so on.
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