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.
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 in order:
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. The relevant information collected by the researcher will be presented in the introduction section of the final published study results. This background material will also help the researcher with the first major step in conducting a psychology study: formulating a hypothesis.
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 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
Once you have a solid hypothesis, the next step of the scientific method is to put this hunch to the test by collecting data. The exact methods used to investigate a hypothesis depend on exactly what is being studied. There are two basic forms of research that a psychologist might utilize: descriptive research or experimental research. Descriptive research is typically used when it would be difficult or even impossible to manipulate the variables in question. Examples of descriptive research include case studies, naturalistic observation, and correlation studies. Phone surveys that are often used by marketers are one example of descriptive research. Correlational studies are 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. 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. While psychology experiments are often quite complex, a simple experiment is fairly basic but does allow researchers to determine cause-and-effect relationships between variables. Most simple experiments use a control group (those who do not receive the treatment) and an experimental 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. 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
The final step in a psychology study is to report the findings. This is often done by writing up a description of the study and publishing the article in an academic or professional journal. The results of psychological studies can be seen in peer-reviewed journals such as Psychological Bulletin, the Journal of Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and many others. The structure of a journal article follows a specified format that has been outlined by the American Psychological Association (APA). In these articles, researchers:
Provide a brief history and background on previous researchPresent their hypothesisIdentify who participated in the study and how they were selectedProvide operational definitions for each variableDescribe the measures and procedures that were used to collect dataExplain how the information collected was analyzedDiscuss what the results mean
Why is such a detailed record of a psychological study so important? By clearly explaining the steps and procedures used throughout the study, other researchers can then replicate the results. The editorial process employed by academic and professional journals ensures that each article that is submitted undergoes a thorough peer review, which helps ensure that the study is scientifically sound. Once published, the study becomes another piece of the existing puzzle of our knowledge base on that topic.
Key Terms
Before you begin exploring the scientific method steps, here’s a review of some key terms and definitions that you should be familiar with:
Falsifiable: The variables can be measured so that if a hypothesis is false, it can be proven false Hypothesis: An educated guess about the possible relationship between two or more variables Variable: A factor or element that can change in observable and measurable ways Operational definition: A full description of exactly how variables are defined, how they will be manipulated, and how they will be measured
Uses
The goals of psychological studies are to describe, explain, predict and perhaps influence mental processes or behaviors. In order to do this, psychologists utilize the scientific method to conduct psychological research. The scientific method is a set of principles and procedures that are used by researchers to develop questions, collect data, and reach conclusions. 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
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 between psychotherapy and anxiety.
Step 1. Make an observation: The researchers choose to focus their study on adults ages 25 to 40 with generalized anxiety disorder. Step 2. Ask a question: The question they want to answer in their study is: Do weekly psychotherapy sessions reduce symptoms in adults ages 25 to 40 with generalized anxiety disorder? Step 3. Test your hypothesis: Researchers collect data on participants’ anxiety symptoms. They work with therapists to create a consistent program that all participants undergo. Group 1 may attend therapy once per week, whereas group 2 does not attend therapy. Step 4. Examine the results: Participants record their symptoms and any changes over a period of three months. After this period, people in group 1 report significant improvements in their anxiety symptoms, whereas those in group 2 report no significant changes. Step 5. Report the results: Researchers write a report that includes their hypothesis, information on participants, variables, procedure, and conclusions drawn from the study. In this case, they say that “Weekly therapy sessions are shown to reduce anxiety symptoms in adults ages 25 to 40.”
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.
