In this lesson, the steps of the Scientific Method are reviewed (they are NOT reviewed this way in your text), and research questions that have special relevance in Social Psychology are discussed.
Before we begin to look at specific research studies, let’s review the steps of the Scientific Method.
Find a research topic or question that interests you.
Discover what has already been learned about this topic.
Refine your research question using the information you collected in steps 1 & 2.
State your question in terms of an hypothesis that is explicit and testable.
Test hypothesis — collect data in one of the following ways:
Experiments
Descriptive research (surveys, interviews)
Combination of both the above
Interpret data and draw conclusions
Make your findings available (i.e., publish them) so that others can replicate your study and confirm (or not) your conclusions.
Although you probably have studied the scientific method in several classes before this process evolves with time. Here I have emphasized two steps that you may not have studied before: discovering the research that has already been conducted on the subject and publishing your results. In today’s “Information Age,” adding these two steps to your process will save you time and ensure that your research is reviewed by others who are knowledgeable in the area.
Many experiments have been conducted in the century since social psychology emerged as a distinct specialty, as you can imagine, but there are still some that are so well known that we could call them infamous. One of those is a study that was conducted at Stanford University (CA) in 1971 by Haney, Banks and Zimbardo. It is widely known as the “Stanford Prison Experiment” or “Zimbardo’s Prison Study.”
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