Investigating the Psychological World: Scientific Method in the Behavioral Sciences

Preface

Preface Although modern science is made up of many parts, scientific method is its centerpiece. The centrality of method to science stems from the fact that it provides scientists with the primary form of guidance in their quest to obtain knowledge about the world. As fallible inquirers, scientists face immense challenges in their efforts to learn about the complexities of nature. In good part, these challenges are met through the use of methods, which provide scientists with the cognitive assistance that they need to undertake successful inquiry. However, despite its undoubted importance, scientific method receives less considered attention than it deserves, from both scientists and educators . Of course, scientists take method seriously, but I believe that they do not take it seriously enough. Scientists themselves, including psychologists , learn about research methods and how to use them to conduct their research. However, the nature of this learning, and of the instruction they receive about how to employ these methods, is better described as a mix of training and indoctrination than as a genuine education designed to provide a critical, in-depth understanding of the methods. Although professional science educators sometimes promote the importance of the epistemological foundations of scientific method, the influence of this source of learning on the regular teaching of research methods is minimal. Psychology, which provides extensively in its curriculum for teaching research methods, uses textbooks that make little or no effort to inform students in depth about the nature of scientific method. Nor does its curriculum foster a critical appreciation of the various research methods that its textbooks deal with. Consequently both psychological scientists and psychology students tend to have a limited understanding of scientific method, which in turn contributes to a misuse of research methods and a suboptimal level of scientific literacy. x Preface I think that the missing key in this educational failure is scientific methodology. Methodology is the domain officially charged with fostering the evolution and understanding of scientific methods, and it is our official repository of knowledge about those methods. Scientific methodology is not the exclusive domain of any particular discipline. Rather, it is a central part of cognitive theory, which is itself regarded as an interdisciplinary endeavor. It spans the domains of statistics, the philosophy of science, the sociology of science, the various disciplines of cognitive science, and more; but it is reducible to none of them. As a practical endeavor, methodology is concerned with the mutual adjustment of means and ends. It judges whether methods are sufficiently effective for reaching certain goals. But methodology is also critically aim oriented and considers what goals the research enterprise should pursue. Clearly no single discipline can realistically aspire to cover all the tasks of methodology. The methodological literature in psychology is dominated by the field of statistics. Quantitative methods receive the large majority of attention in both research methods textbooks and research practice. Qualitative research methods are regarded as a poor cousin and remain on the margins of methodology, although there are signs that they are gaining some acceptance. As important as statistical methods are to science, they cannot be all that there is to scientific method. Consequently the clarion call for statisticians to be the purveyors of scientific method (e.g., Marquardt, 1987) is inappropriate. The guiding assumption of this book is that treating scientific method with the seriousness it deserves requires taking scientific methodology seriously. I do this by giving special consideration to behavioral science methodology, the philosophy of science, and statistical theory. Thus the book is interdisciplinary in nature. The philosophy of science figures more prominently in this book than is usual for methodology texts. The reason for this emphasis is that contemporary philosophy of science contains an array of important methodological insights that are impossible to ignore when coming to grips with scientific method. In recent years, philosophy of science has increasingly sought to understand science as it is practiced, and although it has much work to do in this regard, it now has important things to say about how science is, and should be, conducted. As part of this concern with scientific practice, philosophers of science have given increased attention to research methods in science. A positive development in this regard has been the focus on the methodology of Preface xi experimentation over the last thirty years, although the methodology of theory construction remains the dominant focus in the philosophy of science. Of late, philosophers of science...