Kite Mary E. - Principles of Research in Behavioral Science

First published 2013

by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the UK

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2013 Taylor & Francis

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Whitley, Bernard E.Principles of research in behavioral science / Bernard E. Whitley, Jr., and Mary E. Kite; with contributions by Heather L. Adams.3rd ed.

p. cm.

1. PsychologyResearchMethodology. I. Kite, Mary E. II. Adams, Heather L. III. Title.

BF76.5.W48 2013

150.72dc23

2012014780

ISBN: 978-0-415-87928-6 (hbk)

ISBN:978-0-203-08521-9 (ebk)

ISBN:978-1-136-19658-4 (epub)

Typeset in Palatino and Optima

by EvS Communication Networx, Inc

About the Authors

Bernard E. Whitley, Jr. is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychological Science at Ball State University. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and charter member and Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. His research interests include academic integrity and prejudice, and he has published in many journals including Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. His other books include The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination, 2nd ed. (2010) with Mary E. Kite; Academic Dishonesty: An Educators Guide (2002) with Patricia Keith-Spiegel; The Ethics of Teaching: A Casebook (2002) with Patricia Keith-Spiel, Arno Wittig, David Perkins, and Deborah Balogh (2002); and Handbook for Conducting Research on Human Sexuality (2002), edited with Michael Wiederman.

Mary E. Kite is Professor of Psychological Science at Ball State University. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University. Her research focuses on stereotyping and prejudice. Strongly committed to psychology education, she is Past-President of The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP, APA Division 2). She also chaired the APA Presidential Task Force on Diversity Education Resources and was Secretary-Treasurer and President of the Midwestern Psychological Association (MPA). She is a Fellow of APA Divisions 2, 9, 35, & 44 and of the Association for Psychological Science and the Midwestern Psychological Association. She coauthored the second edition of The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination with Bernard E. Whitley, Jr.

Heather L. Adams is Assistant Professor of Psychological Science at Ball State University. She received her Ph.D. in Lifespan Developmental Psychology and her certificate in Interdisciplinary Qualitative Studies Graduate from the University of Georgia. Her research, conducted with the qualitative research paradigm, focuses on identity development processes of women living with a chronic illness. She has published in the journals Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research and Journal of Homosexuality. A member of the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology, she is a member of the organizing committee for the A Day in Psychology event hosted in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.

Preface

The first edition of Principles of Research in Behavioral Science was written to fill the need for an appropriate research methods textbook for Masters-level students in psychology and related fields. Our motivation for writing this third edition was threefold: new developments in research (such as the growing importance of the Internet and neuroscience); the need for the book, as shown by its use at a large number of universities; and suggestions for improvements made by colleagues who have used the book. In addition, Mary E. Kite has joined as a collaborator on this new edition and one of our colleagues, Heather Adams, has contributed to one of the chapters. We have tried to produce a book that students will use both as a textbook in their research methods course and keep as a reference for later in their careers. We have been fortunate to work with Debra Riegert, our editor from Taylor and Francis as we developed this new edition.

This book provides an overview of research methods for beginning graduate or advanced undergraduate students. We assume that students will have had undergraduate statistics and a beginning research methods course. Nonetheless, mindful that many students undergraduate research methods courses will have been two or more years in the past, we review basic principles from those courses before expanding on those topics or introducing new ones that are often not included or only lightly covered at the undergraduate level. The book has been kept as nonstatistical as possible, focusing primarily on the conceptual issues inherent in conducting research. Because of this, the text is appropriate for courses that precede, are concurrent with, or follow a graduate statistics course. Our book may cover more ground than most research methods books, so we expect that many instructors will select the chapters or topics within a chapter that best fit their students needs rather than assign the entire text. Our goal was to support this kind of selectivity by making chapters and sections within chapters as independent as possible, although we do refer to material in other chapters when it is relevant.

Changes to the Third Edition

Based on our experience teaching research methods and on reviewers feedback, we have extensively updated the chapters and have reordered their sequence to more closely parallel the steps of the research process. Part 1, the Introduction, describes the role of theory in the research process and surveys the major research strategies to provide a context for the following chapters. Part 2, entitled Foundations of Research, discusses issues common to all forms of research: the ethical treatment of research participants, scientists professional and social responsibilities, formulating research questions, measurement, internal validity, and external validity. The largest changes have been to Part 3, now entitled Research Designs to better describe the chapters content. Rather than focusing on broad strategies, each chapter now focuses on a given approach to research: group comparison designs (e.g., true experiments and field research, organized into two chapters), correlational designs, single-case designs, and survey research. As noted, Heather Adams collaborated with Bernard Whitley on a new chapter on content analysis and qualitative research. The material on factor analysis has been moved to a new chapter on exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis that also addresses the use of path analysis and structural equation modeling to test mediational models. Part 4, entitled Collecting and Interpreting Data, addresses data collection and interpreting results. Part 5, Special Topics, includes chapters on evaluation research, integrative literature reviewing, and writing research reports. Throughout the book we have included examples of how the issues we discuss relate to cross-cultural and multi-cultural research.