Many people pay attention to psychological research, but the focus is different. Some people pay more attention to the positive findings of psychological research, and some pay more attention to the negative results of psychological research. How to think about psychology research? Or, what is the difference between psychological research and other scientific research? That is, what are the main characteristics of a psychological study? This is a big problem that can be examined from many perspectives (for example, the perspective of research plans). Researchers should make a psychological study, and face some important decisions, involving four aspects of each other, namely variables, design, samples and analysis. In fact, these aspects, previous articles have been introduced separately, this paper from the perspective of the main characteristics of psychological research.

1、 Variable

In psychology, variables are very complex and delicate problems. Variables are things that can be changed, their changes can be measured, and researchers can compare them based on variables. If the researchers want to test the hypothesis that temperature (cold and hot) affects aggression, then temperature is a variable. How do researchers define and control temperature for this research? In particular, how can temperature rather than humidity be determined to be related to aggression?

From the perspective of research, the main problem here is how to measure "aggressiveness". Generally, physical properties are relatively easy to measure, and psychological attributes are not easy to measure. In the history of psychological development, many important psychologists are developing the technology to measure human behavior and psychological characteristics. In the case of the case, the researcher can develop an aggressive questionnaire or scale; We can observe the situation of people in the working scene, record the number of arguments or the number of scolding; The subjects can hammer an inflatable pad and record his / her strength; You can also check school or police announcements to record the number of violence. All of this is an aggressive measure.

It is important that psychological researchers communicate with others to introduce how they measure variables. For example, researchers cannot simply say "tested memory", but must give the following types of information: "the subjects are required to recall a word list containing 20 words, and the number of words correctly recalled within 2 minutes as the score of memory task scores". If others want to repeat the study, such a clear definition is critical. It is a basic work for psychological research to define variables, accurately state the meaning of a term and how to measure it.

2、 Design

In the example above, the researcher could use different research designs, for example, he or she could do a laboratory study or a field study. If the researcher wants to measure aggression in real life, he / she may want to measure office situations in hot and cold days, respectively. If the researcher needs to control the environment carefully, he / she can use a psychology lab. Researchers could ask subjects to perform a frustrating task, such as balancing pencils on slow moving devices, and then testing a questionnaire to measure aggression. The researchers tested the subjects under both cold and hot conditions to ensure that the temperature was the same under each condition. In addition, researchers may need to control humidity by the same humidity in cold and hot conditions. In different research designs, such experiments can be conducted in different ways, that is, the design in the subjects can be adopted. The researchers can conduct frustration task experiments on the same subjects under two temperature conditions, or design between subjects. The researchers use two different groups of subjects, one condition and one group of subjects.

3、 Sample

Generally speaking, the research object of psychology is human, usually a sample from human population or a sub population. In examining the above assumptions of temperature impact aggression, researchers can do a field study (i.e., in real life situations outside the laboratory) to observe office staff in hot and cold days. However, can researchers be sure that construction workers or nurses do the same? If the researchers choose a sample of a laboratory experiment, is it possible to make the sample representative of more people? What factors do you need to consider? Obviously, this is a sampling issue. One important and fundamental principle to remember is that in psychology research, researchers usually have no particular interest in research samples - some qualitative psychological research exceptions, of course, such samples may be the focus of the researchers' attention. The researchers studied a sample because he / she could not be the whole population and assumed that the sample was the representative of the whole they were studying. In biological research, studying a bat sample is to extend the study to all bats of that species. However, psychological researchers tend to forget about this principle.

4、 Analysis

The analysis problems have been mentioned in the blog article "five elements of research and design", which includes quantitative research and qualitative research. This paper mainly deals with the statistical problems in quantitative research. When it comes to statistics, psychological researchers should build confidence, which is much easier than the general people think. In the interview of postgraduate entrance examination, once asked about statistical knowledge, many candidates will be embarrassed to say: "sorry, teacher, I am not very good at statistics." This suggests an important question, psychology students, how to learn statistics. In fact, there have been statistical software packages available for use, and researchers do not need to use complex formulas for manual calculation. Researchers should be clear that psychological research needs statistical analysis, especially the proper use of statistics.

The reason why psychology needs statistical analysis is that the conclusions formed by researchers need evidence, and the best way to provide evidence is often statistical results. Psychological researchers do not need to fully understand complex statistical formulas - many books of psychostatistics tend to emphasize that learning this book does not require a deep mathematical knowledge. What researchers need to understand is what type of statistical analysis they should use, how to prepare data, how to use statistical software for statistical analysis, especially how to use and interpret the analysis results. Researchers can not make improper statements on the statistical results, can not use improper data for analysis, and can not use the wrong statistical test. Statistics only support a claim that they cannot prove true. Statistics is a useful tool in studying the behavior similarities and differences between individuals and groups in different situations. Researchers should regard statistics as a means to get clear, objective and fair conclusions in psychological research.

In a word, the main characteristics of psychological research are as follows: the definition and measurement of variables, the planning and decision-making of design, the thinking and extraction of samples, the selection and determination of analysis, etc., the particularity of the research object and research problems, which makes psychological research and other scientific research have both connection and difference, and the difference is the main.