Research Methodology

Traditions of Psychological Research: Positivism, Interpretation, critical theory, psychodynamics.

Paradigms in Psychological Research: Macro theory and microtheory, conflict paradigm, symbolic interpretive, structural functionism, Feminist Paradigms

Dietetics of Psychological Research: Idiographic and Nomothetic Explanation, Inductive and Deductive theory, Qualitative and Quantitative data, Pure and Applied research.

Ethics of Psychological Research: Informed consent and deception, freedom to withdraw, protection from harm and  debriefing,  removing  harmful  consequences,confidentially.

Research Methods: Descriptive observation : Naturalisitc observation, case study, survey research, sources of error in descriptive research

Relational Research : Introduction, data for a correlation study, applications of correlational methods.

Experimental Method Qualitative field study: naturalism, ethno methodology, grounded theory, institutional ethnography, participatory action research

Research designs: Introduction, purpose Types : pretests – post test, variants of basic designs, randomized group,correlated groups

Quantitative Data Analysis

Descriptive Statistics:   measures of central tendency, measures of variability, correlation coefficient, regression analysis, normal distribution.

Inferential Statistics : sampling, Standard Error Formula (mean, S.D. correlation) testing differences between two groups – t test, F test (one way Anova, two way Anova, ANCOVA)

Non Parametric Tests: Mann – Whitney, Wilcoxan Signed – ranks, chisquare

Qualitative Data Analysis: Introduction; linking theory and analysis - Discovering patterns, grounded theory method, semiotics, conversation analysis; Qualitative Data Processing : Coding, Mamoing, concept mapping; Computer programmes for Qualitative data – Leviticus as seen  through  NUDIST;  the  qualitative  analysis  of quantitative data.

Interpreting   Specific    Results:   Problem    of     scale attenuation, regression artifacts

Interpreting Patterns     of      Research:    Reliability   and replication, converging operations

Goal of a research report: General APA guidelines for writing style format : some elements of working style, guidelines for typing or word processing

Elements of an APA – style research; submitting a manuscript for publication, writing a research proposal.