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Argh, what does this mean?!

Revising for Mod 5 - Debates section - Is Psychology a Science?

One of the AO2 points in my textbook states that data can be collected in different ways (e.g. discourse analysis, interviews etc) which can then be "triangulated".

What does triangulated mean? I've googled it and all it comes up with is algebra!

If ne1 knows id rly appreciate some help!

thanks

- Sar x

Reply 1

danny_se

The impression that i got from that book, was that you could change qualititive data (eg. interviews) into quantitive data (eg. numbers) through triangulation. Therefore making the usually unverifiable qualititive data verifiable, just like quantitive data. Basically it makes psychological methodology more scientific.

Reply 2

Podge

i dont do debates, but from what i know of sociology. triangulation is when you use qualitative methods with quantitative methods together. it can be useful for checking for accuracy (reliablity and validty), checking quantitative research using qualitative data, getting higher validity,correlations- show why various variabekls are statistically correlated e.g crime, poverty etc.

hope this helps!

Reply 3

lady_cutie

I thought triangulation is when u use omre than one reserch method to get more valid results, for instance - instead of using just an experiment you would use questionnaires as well!!

Reply 4

Melana

Yeah I agree with lady_cutie and Podge- it's the combination of a variety of methods from sciencey stuff and non-sciencey stuff so that you get things with are reliable (lab experiment) and valid (representative of real behaviour)

Reply 5

8owman

I think Cardwell stole that term from Haralmbos lol. Triangluation simply means using more than one research method to make the data more rich and meaningful.