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How do you know? Psychology and scientific method

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Part of the book series: Psychology for Professional Groups

Abstract

Wherever I put this chapter it seemed out of place. If at the beginning, I thought it might put you off reading any more; at the end, it was incongruous because so much of psychology is based in experiment and research. So here it is in the middle.

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Further study

  • Gardiner, J.M. and Kaminska, K. (1975) First Experiments in Psychology. London: Methuen.

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  • Legge, D. (1975) An Introduction to Psychological Science. London: Methuen.

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  • Miller, S.H. (1976) Experimental Design and Statistics. London: Methuen.

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Reference

  • Fransella, F. (1960) The treatment of chronic schizophrenia: intensive occupational therapy with and without chlorpromazine. Occupational Therapy Journal, 23.

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Annotated reading

  • Cook, T.D. and Campbell, D.T. (1979) Quasi-experimentation: Design and analysis issues for field settings. Chicago: Rand McNally. Describes techniques that may be available when experiments cannot be used.

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  • Barber, T.X. (1977) Pitfalls in Human Research. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

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  • Jung, J. (1971) The Experimenter’s Dilemma. New York: Harper & Row. Some books have analysed the sources of difficulty in finding out; these are two useful ones.

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  • Meddis, R. (1973) Elementary Analysis of Variance for the Behavioural Sciences. London: McGraw-Hill. The student can acquire more advanced treatments for complex experiments from this text.

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  • Miller, S.H. (1976) Experimental Design and Statistics. London: Methuen.

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  • Robson, C. (1973) Experiment, Design and Statistics in Psychology. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Two relatively simple and accessible paperback volumes which act as starter texts in psychological statistics.

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  • Siegel, S. (1956) Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences. New York: McGraw-Hill. The ‘bible’ of the non-parametric techniques that has proved indispensable to psychologists.

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  • Snodgrass, J.G. (1977) The Numbers Game: Statistics for psychology. London: Oxford University Press. The student who masters the first two may want to go further. This should provide some help to that progress.

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© 1982 The British Psychological Society

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Legge, D. (1982). How do you know? Psychology and scientific method. In: Psychology for Occupational Therapists. Psychology for Professional Groups. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16882-8_14

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