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How do researchers investigate psychological phenomena? They utilize a process known as the scientific method to study different aspects of how people think and behave.
When conducting research, the scientific method steps to follow are:
This process not only allows scientists to investigate and understand different psychological phenomena but also provides researchers and others a way to share and discuss the results of their studies.
Generally, there are five main steps in the scientific method, although some may break down this process into six or seven steps. An additional step in the process can also include developing new research questions based on your findings.
What Is the Scientific Method?
What is the scientific method and how is it used in psychology?
By knowing the steps of the scientific method, you can better understand the process researchers go through to arrive at conclusions about human behavior.
Scientific Method Steps
While research studies can vary, these are the basic steps that psychologists and scientists use when investigating human behavior.
The following are the scientific method steps:
Step 1. Make an Observation
Before a researcher can begin, they must choose a topic to study. Once an area of interest has been chosen, the researchers must then conduct a thorough review of the existing literature on the subject. This review will provide valuable information about what has already been learned about the topic and what questions remain to be answered.
A literature review might involve looking at a considerable amount of written material from both books and academic journals dating back decades.
Step 2. Ask a Question
Once a researcher has observed something and gained some background information on the topic, the next step is to ask a question. The researcher will form a hypothesis, which is an educated guess about the relationship between two or more variables
For example, a researcher might ask a question about the relationship between sleep and academic performance: Do students who get more sleep perform better on tests at school?
In order to formulate a good hypothesis, it is important to think about different questions you might have about a particular topic.
You should also consider how you could investigate the causes. Falsifiability is an important part of any valid hypothesis. In other words, if a hypothesis was false, there needs to be a way for scientists to demonstrate that it is false.
Step 3. Test Your Hypothesis and Collect Data
Correlational studiesare quite common in psychology research. While they do not allow researchers to determine cause-and-effect, they do make it possible to spot relationships between different variables and to measure the strength of those relationships.
Experimental research is used to explore cause-and-effect relationships between two or more variables. This type of research involves systematically manipulating anindependent variableand then measuring the effect that it has on a defineddependent variable.
One of the major advantages of this method is that it allows researchers to actually determine if changes in one variable actually cause changes in another.
Whilepsychology experimentsare often quite complex, asimple experimentis fairly basic but does allow researchers to determine cause-and-effect relationships between variables. Most simple experiments use acontrol group(those who do not receive the treatment) and anexperimental group(those who do receive the treatment).
Step 4. Examine the Results and Draw Conclusions
Once a researcher has designed the study and collected the data, it is time to examine this information and draw conclusions about what has been found.Using statistics, researchers can summarize the data, analyze the results, and draw conclusions based on this evidence.
So how does a researcher decide what the results of a study mean? Not only can statistical analysis support (or refute) the researcher’s hypothesis; it can also be used to determine if the findings are statistically significant.
When results are said to be statistically significant, it means that it is unlikely that these results are due to chance.
Based on these observations, researchers must then determine what the results mean. In some cases, an experiment will support a hypothesis, but in other cases, it will fail to support the hypothesis.
So what happens if the results of a psychology experiment do not support the researcher’s hypothesis? Does this mean that the study was worthless?
Just because the findings fail to support the hypothesis does not mean that the research is not useful or informative. In fact, such research plays an important role in helping scientists develop new questions and hypotheses to explore in the future.
After conclusions have been drawn, the next step is to share the results with the rest of the scientific community. This is an important part of the process because it contributes to the overall knowledge base and can help other scientists find new research avenues to explore.
Step 5. Report the Results
Once published, the study becomes another piece of the existing puzzle of our knowledge base on that topic.
Before you begin exploring the scientific method steps, here’s a review of some key terms and definitions that you should be familiar with:
Uses for the Scientific Method
Goals of Scientific Research in PsychologyResearchers seek not only to describe behaviors and explain why these behaviors occur; they also strive to create research that can be used to predict and even change human behavior.
Goals of Scientific Research in Psychology
Researchers seek not only to describe behaviors and explain why these behaviors occur; they also strive to create research that can be used to predict and even change human behavior.
Psychologists and other social scientists regularly propose explanations for human behavior. On a more informal level, people make judgments about the intentions,motivations, and actions of others on a daily basis.
While the everyday judgments we make about human behavior are subjective and anecdotal, researchers use the scientific method to study psychology in an objective and systematic way. The results of these studies are often reported in popular media, which leads many to wonder just how or why researchers arrived at the conclusions they did.
Examples of the Scientific Method
Now that you’re familiar with the scientific method steps, it’s useful to see how each step could work with a real-life example.
Say, for instance, that researchers set out to discover what the relationship is betweenpsychotherapyandanxiety.
Of course, there are many details that go into planning and executing a study such as this. But this general outline gives you an idea of how an idea is formulated and tested, and how researchers arrive at results using the scientific method.
2 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Erol A.How to conduct scientific research?Noro Psikiyatr Ars. 2017;54(2):97-98. doi:10.5152/npa.2017.0120102University of Minnesota.Psychologists use the scientific method to guide their research.Additional ReadingShaughnessy, JJ, Zechmeister, EB, & Zechmeister, JS.Research Methods In Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill Education; 2015.
2 Sources
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Erol A.How to conduct scientific research?Noro Psikiyatr Ars. 2017;54(2):97-98. doi:10.5152/npa.2017.0120102University of Minnesota.Psychologists use the scientific method to guide their research.Additional ReadingShaughnessy, JJ, Zechmeister, EB, & Zechmeister, JS.Research Methods In Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill Education; 2015.
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Erol A.How to conduct scientific research?Noro Psikiyatr Ars. 2017;54(2):97-98. doi:10.5152/npa.2017.0120102University of Minnesota.Psychologists use the scientific method to guide their research.
Erol A.How to conduct scientific research?Noro Psikiyatr Ars. 2017;54(2):97-98. doi:10.5152/npa.2017.0120102
University of Minnesota.Psychologists use the scientific method to guide their research.
Shaughnessy, JJ, Zechmeister, EB, & Zechmeister, JS.Research Methods In Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill Education; 2015.
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