If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? Albert Einstein

 Basic Purpose: To observe and record behavior.  Case Studies  Surveys  Correlational Studies  Naturalistic Observation  Quasi-Experiment

 Advantages  Provides in-depth information on individuals.  Provides ideas for further research  Disadvantages  Cannot generalize the results to other individuals  Cannot draw cause & effect conclusions

 Advantages  Can obtain descriptive information about large groups of people.  Disadvantages  May produce biased results because of atypical sample, overly positive answers, and/or inaccurate recall  Cannot draw cause & effect relationship

 Advantages  Provides information about people and animals in real-world settings.  Disadvantages  May be difficult to conduct research on infrequent behavior.  Cannot draw cause & effect relationship

 Basic Purpose  To detect naturally occurring relationships; to assess how well one variable predicts another.  How Conducted  Computing statistical association, sometimes among survey responses.

 Advantages  Can study behavior in real world settings.  Can determine whether two variables are related.  Disadvantages  Cannon draw cause & effect relationship Correlation between smoking and lung cancer in US males, showing a 20-year time lag between increased smoking rates and increased incidence of lung cancer.

 Basic Purpose: To explore cause & effect.  Manipulate 1 or more factors and use random assignment to eliminate preexisting differences among subjects.  Experiment  Quasi Experiment

 Advantages:  Can control potentially confounding variables  Can draw cause & effect relationship  Disadvantages:  May be difficult to generalize to real world settings.  Cannot manipulate many variables.

 Advantages:  Can study behavior in real world settings.  Can draw tentative cause & effect conclusions.  Disadvantages:  Cannot control confounding variables as well as in a controlled experiment.  Cause & effect relationships are not as firm as with the experimental method. “Genie” after she was discovered.

 A director of a child welfare agency wants to understand the beliefs and feelings of people who were abused when they were children so that she can provide them with the support they need to prevent them from abusing their own children.

 A high school teacher wants to know if allowing his students to listen to their favorite music on their iPods during tests will cause their test scores to increase.

 A life insurance executive wants to know the percentage of people who obey traffic laws (i.e. wearing their seat belts or coming to a complete stop at a stop sign.)

 A political biographer wants to know the specific people and events that motivated Bill Clinton to enter politics and eventually run for president.

 Ms. Stiles wants to explore the relationship between the number of hours spent sleeping and GPA.