access to HE Introduction to Psychology unit.. HELP NEEDED

i think they’re talking about what research method the psychologist used. for example, was it a laboratory experiment, field experiment or natural experiment

what makes an experiment scientific?
it must include a variable, independent variable, dependent variable and a hypothesis.

Im also on this unit and trying to write the question, any tips?

We need more detail.
What is the assignment question exactly and what is the critea.

"Discuss two scientific research methods commonly used by psychologists."
I have chosen to research field and natural observation for this part but unsure what info to includeSt

Still unclear to me. I mean if it was me I wouldnt choose field research and natural observations
Any chance of showing the assignment brief?

can i message you?

This is some notes I did on scientfic methodology, maybe this will help. I put in bold what might help.

Methodology: A system of methods used to conduct a specific experiment or study. If the methodology of an experiment is not repeatable than it is said that the experiment lacks validity and reliability (Andersen and Hepburn, 2018). To simplify this further many liken methodology to a cooking recipe. Each step must be followed correctly in order to achieve the desired outcome. If a step is incorrect due to the person not being able to recreate a particular step than the methodology of an experiment may be called into question.

Positivism: A system of research that prefers results that can be measured imperially through science and not through Interpretivism of data. An example of a positivist approach to research methods is a scientist using quantitative data to state his results of an experiment. An example of some research methods are Surveys, polls, measurements and certain questionnaires. Positivism was coined by Auguste Comte and was is often credited with modernising science (Bourdeau, 2019).

Anti-Positivism: This is the preference of data that requires interpretation to understand due to the information being difficult to state in an empirical, scientific or numerical manner for example Reflective journals (Gorton, 2019). The anti-positivism approach is great at explaining human behaviour and due to how complicated the data is and how much interpretivism is required. An example of a prominent Anti-Positivist psychologist is Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

What is Science ( Empiricism): Science is the study of understanding the world through scientific methods. Scientific empiricism refers to keeping science evidence based and all theories and hypotheses must be thoroughly tested (Baltes and Smelser, 2004). For example although the theory of evolution is widely accepted it is still considered a theory. Despite this theory being around 150 years old it still gets regularly tested and if it fails the test it will not be seen as a credible theory. An example of a widely regarded theory that was accepted as fact for over 300 years was Newtonian mechanics. Many believed that this was not likely to change until Einstein published the theory of relatively and proved that Newtonian mechanics did not take until account for the effect of gravity on time.



Northumbria University (Ethics)
A British university has been fined £400,000 due to an unethical experiment. The goal of the experiment was to measure the effect of caffeine on exercise. Unfortunately their was a error in the dosage and the subjects were given a potentially lethal overdose of caffeine. They got sent into intensive care and almost died. The courts ruled that the people carrying out the study were not trained and competent enough to administer the research and that due to this the study was unethical. The university apologised. Research ethnics were ignored in this case and this is important because ethnics in research are a key consideration. One of the key ones that was ignored in this instance is used for practicing Doctors around the world which is ‘I shall do no harm’ (Resnick, 2019)