Research Methods in Psychology

Dennis Howitt was a Reader in Psychology at Loughborough University, chartered forensic psychologist and Fellow of the British Psychological Society, with a specific interest in the study of mass communications and the application of psychology to social issues.Duncan Cramer is an Emeritus Professor at Loughborough University with a specific interest in topics such as mental health, personality, personal relationships, organizational commitment, psychotherapy and counselling.

• ContentsGuided tourIntroductionAcknowledgementsPlan of the bookPart 1 Basics of research Role of research in psychologyAims and hypotheses in researchVariables, concepts and measuresProblems of generalisation and decision-making in researchResearch reportsImproving a quantitative write-upLiterature searchEthics and data management in researchPart 2 Quantitative research methods Basic laboratory experimentsAdvanced experimental designsPlacebos, experimenter effects and demand characteristicsCross-sectional or correlational researchLongitudinal studiesSmall-N and single-case experimental designsSurveys, samples and populationsProgress in Data analysisPart 3 Fundamentals of testing and measurement Psychological testsReliability and validityCoding dataPart 4 Qualitative research methods Why qualitative research?Qualitative data collectionTranscribing language dataThematic analysisGrounded theoryDiscourse analysisConversation analysisInterpretative phenomenological analysisEvaluating qualitative researchImproving a qualitative write-upPart 5 Final considerations for research projects Online Internet mediated researchDeveloping ideas for researchManaging your research projectGlossaryReferencesIndex