Statistics And Psychology
In psychology, research is an essential process that provides data and information about the various aspects that affect the human behavior. In general terms, research can be defined as an investigative activity that deals with collection and presentation of statistical information about a certain subject in order to enable a clear understanding of the subject by the recipients. In psychology, research deals with studying and presenting reliable information about human behavior for the use by the various interested parties in the field of psychology. Generally, research will use scientific methods to provide statistical data and empirical evidence to prove or disprove psychological theories.
Psychology is a branch of social sciences that deals with study of human behavior. Just as science entails observation and experimentation, psychology applies scientific approach to observe and experiment human behavior. According to Dyer (2006), science has been instrumental in psychological research due to the usefulness of scientific approach in generating new knowledge on human memory that is virtually immutable. In addition, psychology and science go together due to the requirement for transparency in reasoning – commitment to public knowledge, rationality – reasoning that follows rules of logic and is trans-cultural and acknowledgement of a single source of authority (Dyer, 2006).
Both research and statistics are important to psychology due to their affiliation to science. While research generally deals with trying to prove or disprove the psychological theories on human behavior and brain, statistics tends to determine the validity and significance of the findings on psychological research through probability. Research and statistics focus on proving psychological theories through empirical evidence to make practical and critical conclusions. This is done through scientific method, which is an investigative technique that involves collecting observable evidence, explanation through formulation of hypotheses, logical predictions based on the hypotheses formulated and testing of the hypotheses to establish the validity of the predictions. One importance of scientific method is elimination of researcher’s bias ness on the outcome of an experiment.
In carrying out psychological research, the researcher may use either primary data or secondary data, or both. Either of the two data collection methods has merits and demerits although the two may have some similarities based on their application. As the name suggests primary data is fresh data that has never been researched or collected before and may be obtained through observation, survey, interview or questionnaire. Secondary data on the other hand involves data sourced from the work of other previous researchers which may be contained in books, journals or other pre-presented material.
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