Methods of Enquiry in Psychology

Activity . Telephone Survey Surveys are also conducted through telephone , and now-a-days you must have seen programmes asking you to send your views through mobile phones’ SMS. The telephone survey helps in reducing time. However, since the respondents do not know the interviewer, the technique is fraught with uncooperativeness, reluctance, and superficial answers by the respondents.

There is also a possibility that those responding may differ from those not responding, e.g., on age, gender, income levels, education levels, etc., besides their psychological characteristics. This will lead to very biased kinds of results. The method of observation have been discussed earlier. This method is also used which is used to assess an individual’s standing in relation to others on some mental or behavioural characteristics.

Two things are worth noting in this definition: objectivity and standardisation. Objectivity refers to the fact that if two or more researchers administer a psychological test on the same group of people, both of them would come up with more or less the same values for each person in the group. In order for a psychological test to become an objective measure, it is essential that items should be worded in such a manner that they communicate the same meaning to different readers. Also, the instructions to the test takers about how to answer the test items should be specified in advance.

The procedure of administering the test such as environmental conditions, time limit, mode of administration (individual or group) should be spelt, and the procedure for scoring of the participants’ responses need to be described. The construction of a test is a systematic process and involves certain steps. It involves detailed analysis of items, and estimating reliability , validity , and norms of the whole test. Reliability of the test refers to the consistency of scores obtained by an individual on the same test on two different occasions.

For example, you administer the test to a group of students today and re-administer it on the same set of students after some time, let us say days. If the test is reliable, there should not be any variation in the scores obtained by the students on the two occasions. For this, we can compute test-retest reliability, which indicates the temporal stability (or stability of the test scores over time). It is computed by finding out co-efficient of correlation between the two sets of scores on the same set of persons.

Another kind of test reliability is called split-half reliability. It gives an indication about the degree of internal consistency of the test. This is based on the assumption that items of a test if they are from the same domain should correlate with each other. If they are from different domains, e.g., are apples and oranges, then they would not.

For finding out internal consistency, the test is divided into two equal halves employing odd- even method (items , , ,— in one group and items , , ,— in another group) and correlation is computed between the scores of odd and even items. For a test to be usable, it should also be valid. Validity refers to the question : “Does the test measure what it claims to measure”? For example, if you have constructed a test of mathematics achievement, whether the test is measuring mathematical achievement or for example, language proficiency.

Finally, a test becomes a standardised test when norms are developed for the test. As mentioned earlier, norm is the normal or average performance of the group. The test is administered on a large number of students. Their average performance standards are set based on their age, sex, place of residence, etc.

This helps us in comparing the performance of an individual student with others of the same group. It also helps in interpreting individuals’ score obtained on a test. Types of Tests Psychological tests are classified on the basis of their language, mode of administration, and difficulty level. Depending upon the language, we have verbal , non-verbal , and performance tests.

Literacy is required for taking verbal tests as the items have to be written in some language. In non-verbal tests, items are made of symbols or pictures. Performance tests require movement of objects from their respective places in a particular order. Depending upon the mode of administration, psychological tests are divided into individual or group tests.

An individual test is administered by the researcher to one person at a time, while group tests can be administered to large number of persons at the same time. In individual tests, the researcher administers the test face to face and remains seated before the test taker and notes down the responses. In the group test, the instructions about answering the items, etc., are written on the test, which the test taker reads and answers the questions accordingly. The test administrator explains the instructions to the entire group.

Individual tests are time consuming, but are important ways of getting responses from children, and from those who do not know the language. Group tests are easy to administer and are also less time consuming. However, the responses are fraught with certain limitations. The respondent may not be motivated enough to answer the questions and may give fake responses.

Psychological tests are also classified into speed and power tests. In a speed test, there is a time limit within which the test taker is required to answer all the items. Such a test evaluates the individual on the basis of time taken to answer the items accurately. In a speed test, all the items are of the same degree of difficulty.

On the other hand, power test assesses the underlying ability (or power) of the individuals by allowing them sufficient time, i.e. these tests do not have any time limit. In a power test, the items are generally arranged in an increasing order of difficulty. If a person, for example, is unable to solve the 6th item, s/he will have difficulty in answering the subsequent items.

It is, however, difficult to construct a pure speed or power test. Majority of the tests are a combination of both speed and power. While tests are often used in research and for making decisions about people, tests must be selected and used with great care. The test user or the decision maker should not rely on any single test.

Test data should be combined with information about a person’s background, interests, and past performance. Case Study In this method, the emphasis is given on in- depth study of a particular case. Researchers focus on cases which can provide critical information or new learning on less understood phenomena. The case can be an individual with distinguishing characteristics (for example, a patient showing psychological disorders) or a small group of individuals having some commonality among them (for example, creative writers like Rabindra Nath Tagore, and Mahadevi Verma), institutions (for example, poorly or successfully functioning school or a corporate office), and specific events (for example, children exposed to devastation by tsunami, war or vehicular pollution, etc.).

The cases that we select for study are unique and, therefore, are rich in information. A case study employs multiple methods for collecting information, such as interview, observation, and psychological tests from a variety of respondents who in some way or the other might be associated with the case and can provide useful information. With the help of case studies, psychologists have done research to understand feelings, fantasies, hopes, fears, traumatic experiences, parental upbringing and so on, that helps to understand a person’s mind and behaviour. Case studies provide a narrative or detailed descriptions of the events that take place in a person’s life.

A case study is a valuable research tool in the field of clinical psychology and human development. Freud’s insights that led to the development of psychoanalytic theory emerged from his observations and showed that meticulous records must be maintained on individual cases. Similarly, Piaget developed his theory of cognitive development on the basis of observations of his three children. Case studies have been conducted to understand the pattern of socialisation of children.

For example, Minturn and Hitchcock conducted a case study of socialisation of Take a test with its manual and read it carefully, and identify the following : Number and type of items Information about reliability, validity, and norms Type of test: verbal or otherwise, individual or groups Type of test: Speed, power, or mixed Any other characteristics Discuss these with other students and the teacher.