Research Methods in Psychology

Contents: Preface. 1. Research methods in psychology: an introduction. 2. What is psychology? 3. Quantitative and qualitative psychological research. 4. Research methods in developmental psychology. 5. Experimental psychological research. 6. Psychophysics. 7. Cognitive psychology. 8. Psychology: a historical overview. 9. Research in child psychology. Glossary. Bibliography. Index.

"Research on cause and effect is most often brought to mind. Experiments on causal relationships investigate the effect of one or more variables on one or more outcome variables. This type of research also determines if one variable causes another variable to occur or change. An example of this type of research would be altering the amount of a treatment and measuring the effect on study participants.

Psychology describes and attempts to explain consciousness, behavior and social interaction. Empirical psychology is primarily devoted to describing human experience and behavior as it actually occurs. In the past 20 years or so psychology has begun to examine the relationship between consciousness and the brain or nervous system." (jacket)