I Need Three Questions In Regards To Human Services Theories And Practices?

Chapter 2: Getting Started in Research

Generating Skilful Research Questions

Describe some common sources of research ideas and generate inquiry ideas using those sources.
Depict some techniques for turning research ideas into empirical research questions and use those techniques to generate questions.
Explicate what makes a research question interesting and evaluate research questions in terms of their interestingness.

Practiced research must brainstorm with a good research question. Withal coming upwards with adept inquiry questions is something that novice researchers often find difficult and stressful. One reason is that this is a creative process that can announced mysterious—even magical—with experienced researchers seeming to pull interesting research questions out of thin air. However, psychological inquiry on creativity has shown that information technology is neither as mysterious nor as magical as information technology appears. It is largely the product of ordinary thinking strategies and persistence (Weisberg, 1993)^[1]. This section covers some adequately elementary strategies for finding general research ideas, turning those ideas into empirically testable inquiry questions, and finally evaluating those questions in terms of how interesting they are and how feasible they would exist to answer.

Finding Inspiration

Research questions often brainstorm as more general research ideas—usually focusing on some behaviour or psychological characteristic: talkativeness, learning, depression, bungee jumping, and then on. Earlier looking at how to turn such ideas into empirically testable research questions, it is worth looking at where such ideas come up from in the first place. 3 of the most common sources of inspiration are informal observations, practical bug, and previous research.

Breezy observations include straight observations of our own and others' behaviour too equally secondhand observations from nonscientific sources such as newspapers, books, blogs, and and so on. For instance, you lot might find that you lot always seem to exist in the slowest moving line at the grocery store. Could information technology be that about people think the same thing? Or you might read in a local paper about people donating money and food to a local family unit whose house has burned downwardly and begin to wonder about who makes such donations and why. Some of the almost famous enquiry in psychology has been inspired by breezy observations. Stanley Milgram's famous inquiry on obedience to authority, for example, was inspired in part past journalistic reports of the trials of accused Nazi war criminals—many of whom claimed that they were merely obeying orders. This led him to wonder about the extent to which ordinary people will commit immoral acts simply because they are ordered to do so by an authority figure (Milgram, 1963)^[two].

Practical problems tin too inspire research ideas, leading direct to applied enquiry in such domains as constabulary, health, education, and sports. Does taking lecture notes by hand better students' examination performance? How effective is psychotherapy for depression compared to drug therapy? To what extent do cell phones impair people's driving power? How can we teach children to read more efficiently? What is the best mental preparation for running a marathon?

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Probably the near mutual inspiration for new research ideas, however, is previous research. Retrieve that scientific discipline is a kind of large-scale collaboration in which many different researchers read and evaluate each other's work and conduct new studies to build on it. Of class, experienced researchers are familiar with previous inquiry in their area of expertise and probably take a long list of ideas. This suggests that novice researchers can discover inspiration by consulting with a more experienced researcher (e.g., students can consult a faculty member). But they can also notice inspiration past picking up a copy of almost any professional journal and reading the titles and abstracts. In one typical issue ofPsychological Science, for example, you can discover manufactures on the perception of shapes, anti-Semitism, police lineups, the meaning of death, second-language learning, people who seek negative emotional experiences, and many other topics. If y'all can narrow your interests down to a particular topic (e.yard., memory) or domain (east.1000., wellness care), you tin also await through more specific journals, such asMemory & Noesis orHealth Psychology.

Generating Empirically Testable Research Questions

In one case you have a research idea, yous demand to utilize it to generate one or more empirically testable research questions, that is, questions expressed in terms of a single variable or human relationship between variables. One mode to do this is to expect closely at the word section in a recent research article on the topic. This is the last major section of the article, in which the researchers summarize their results, interpret them in the context of past inquiry, and suggest directions for future research. These suggestions often take the course of specific research questions, which you can then attempt to reply with boosted research. This tin can be a expert strategy because it is probable that the suggested questions accept already been identified as interesting and important past experienced researchers.

Only y'all may too want to generate your ain research questions. How can you practice this? First, if you have a particular behaviour or psychological characteristic in listen, you can simply conceptualize it as a variable and inquire how frequent or intense it is. How many words on boilerplate do people speak per day? How accurate are our memories of traumatic events? What percentage of people take sought professional aid for depression? If the question has never been studied scientifically—which is something that you will acquire in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing.

If scientific research has already answered the question of how frequent or intense the behaviour or characteristic is, then you should consider turning it into a question about a statistical relationship betwixt that behaviour or feature and some other variable. 1 mode to do this is to enquire yourself the following serial of more general questions and write downwards all the answers you can recall of.

What are some possible causes of the behaviour or feature?
What are some possible furnishings of the behaviour or characteristic?
What types of people might exhibit more or less of the behaviour or characteristic?
What types of situations might elicit more than or less of the behaviour or feature?

In general, each reply you write downward can exist conceptualized as a second variable, suggesting a question about a statistical relationship. If yous were interested in talkativeness, for example, it might occur to you that a possible cause of this psychological feature is family size. Is there a statistical relationship between family size and talkativeness? Or it might occur to you that people seem to exist more talkative in same-sexual practice groups than mixed-sex groups. Is there a difference in the average level of talkativeness of people in aforementioned-sexual practice groups and people in mixed-sexual practice groups? This approach should let yous to generate many unlike empirically testable questions about almost any behaviour or psychological characteristic.

If through this process you lot generate a question that has never been studied scientifically—which once again is something that you will learn in your literature review—then information technology might be interesting and worth pursuing. Just what if you notice that it has been studied scientifically? Although novice researchers often want to surrender and move on to a new question at this betoken, this is not necessarily a good strategy. For ane affair, the fact that the question has been studied scientifically and the research published suggests that it is of interest to the scientific community. For another, the question tin about certainly exist refined so that its answer will still contribute something new to the enquiry literature. Once again, asking yourself a serial of more than full general questions nearly the statistical relationship is a proficient strategy.

Are there other ways to operationally ascertain the variables?
Are there types of people for whom the statistical relationship might be stronger or weaker?
Are there situations in which the statistical human relationship might be stronger or weaker—including situations with practical importance?

For example, research has shown that women and men speak about the same number of words per day—but this was when talkativeness was measured in terms of the number of words spoken per day among university students in the United States and Mexico. Nosotros can yet ask whether other ways of measuring talkativeness—mayhap the number of different people spoken to each day—produce the aforementioned effect. Or we can ask whether studying elderly people or people from other cultures produces the same consequence. Over again, this arroyo should help y'all generate many different research questions about almost whatsoever statistical relationship.

Evaluating Enquiry Questions

Researchers usually generate many more research questions than they ever attempt to answer. This means they must take some way of evaluating the enquiry questions they generate so that they tin can choose which ones to pursue. In this section, we consider two criteria for evaluating research questions: the interestingness of the question and the feasibility of answering it.

Interestingness

How often do people tie their shoes? Do people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw? Are women more likely to wear makeup than men? Do people adopt vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Although it would be a fairly simple matter to design a study and collect data to answer these questions, you probably would not want to considering they are not interesting. We are non talking here about whether a inquiry question is interesting to us personally merely whether information technology is interesting to people more than mostly and, especially, to the scientific community. Just what makes a enquiry question interesting in this sense? Hither we look at 3 factors that impact the of a research question: the reply is in doubt, the reply fills a gap in the enquiry literature, and the answer has important practical implications.

Start, a research question is interesting to the extent that its answer is in doubt. Obviously, questions that take been answered by scientific research are no longer interesting every bit the subject of new empirical research. Merely the fact that a question has non been answered by scientific inquiry does not necessarily make it interesting. There has to exist some reasonable chance that the answer to the question volition be something that we did not already know. But how tin can you appraise this before actually collecting information? I arroyo is to effort to think of reasons to expect dissimilar answers to the question—especially ones that seem to disharmonize with common sense. If you can recall of reasons to expect at least ii unlike answers, then the question might be interesting. If yous can call up of reasons to expect only one answer, then it probably is not. The question of whether women are more talkative than men is interesting considering there are reasons to look both answers. The beingness of the stereotype itself suggests the answer could exist yes, but the fact that women's and men's verbal abilities are fairly similar suggests the respond could be no. The question of whether people feel pain when yous punch them in the jaw is not interesting because in that location is admittedly no reason to call back that the reply could be anything other than a resounding yes.

A second of import factor to consider when deciding if a inquiry question is interesting is whether answering information technology will fill a gap in the research literature. Again, this means in part that the question has non already been answered by scientific research. Just it also means that the question is in some sense a natural 1 for people who are familiar with the research literature. For case, the question of whether taking lecture notes past paw tin can help improve students' examination functioning would be likely to occur to anyone who was familiar with research on notetaking and the ineffectiveness of shallow processing on learning.

A final factor to consider when deciding whether a research question is interesting is whether its answer has important practical implications. Again, the question of whether taking notes by hand improves learning has important implications for education, including classroom policies concerning technology use. The question of whether cell phone employ impairs driving is interesting because information technology is relevant to the personal prophylactic of everyone who travels by automobile and to the argue over whether cell phone use should be restricted by law.

Feasibility

A second important criterion for evaluating research questions is the of successfully answering them. There are many factors that affect feasibility, including time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and admission to enquiry participants. Conspicuously, researchers need to take these factors into account then that they do not waste fourth dimension and effort pursuing inquiry that they cannot complete successfully.

Looking through a sample of professional journals in psychology will reveal many studies that are complicated and difficult to acquit out. These include longitudinal designs in which participants are tracked over many years, neuroimaging studies in which participants' brain activity is measured while they comport out diverse mental tasks, and circuitous nonexperimental studies involving several variables and complicated statistical analyses. Continue in mind, though, that such research tends to be carried out by teams of highly trained researchers whose work is often supported in role by government and private grants. Keep in mind also that research does not accept to be complicated or difficult to produce interesting and important results. Looking through a sample of professional journals will also reveal studies that are relatively simple and easy to carry out—mayhap involving a convenience sample of university students and a paper-and-pencil task.

A terminal bespeak here is that it is generally skillful practice to use methods that take already been used successfully by other researchers. For instance, if y'all want to manipulate people's moods to make some of them happy, it would exist a skilful thought to employ one of the many approaches that have been used successfully by other researchers (e.g., paying them a compliment). This is good not but for the sake of feasibility—the arroyo is "tried and truthful"—but likewise because it provides greater continuity with previous research. This makes information technology easier to compare your results with those of other researchers and to understand the implications of their enquiry for yours, and vice versa.

Research ideas tin come from a variety of sources, including informal observations, practical issues, and previous research.
Research questions expressed in terms of variables and relationships betwixt variables can be suggested by other researchers or generated by asking a series of more full general questions about the behaviour or psychological characteristic of interest.
It is important to evaluate how interesting a inquiry question is before designing a written report and collecting information to answer it. Factors that affect interestingness are the extent to which the answer is in uncertainty, whether it fills a gap in the research literature, and whether it has important practical implications.
It is also of import to evaluate how feasible a inquiry question volition be to answer. Factors that affect feasibility include time, money, technical knowledge and skill, and access to special equipment and research participants.

Practise: Generate five research ideas based on each of the following: informal observations, practical issues, and topics discussed in recent issues of professional journals.
Practice: Generate 5 empirical research questions near each of the following behaviours or psychological characteristics: long-distance running, getting tattooed, social anxiety, bullying, and retentivity for early on babyhood events.
Practice: Evaluate each of the research questions you lot generated in Exercise 2 in terms of its interestingness based on the criteria discussed in this section.
Practice: Discover an issue of a periodical that publishes short empirical enquiry reports (due east.g.,Psychological Science,Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, Personality and Social Psychology Message). Option three studies, and rate each one in terms of how feasible it would exist for yous to replicate information technology with the resources bachelor to you right now. Utilize the post-obit rating calibration: (one) You could replicate it substantially as reported. (two) You could replicate it with some simplifications. (3) You could not replicate it. Explain each rating.