FIELDS AND METHODS IN PSYCHOLOGY

Ontology

study of being; concerned with what actually exists in the world about which humans can acquire knowledge.

Realist ontology

the researcher views the world as existing separately from humans and their interpretations of it.

Relativist ontology

based on the philosophy that reality is constructed within the human mind, such that no one ‘true’ reality exists.

Methods

Refers to the details of how exactly the data will be collected

Methodology

Refers to the best way to collect the data

Epistemology

Refers to how to investigate the world. A way of looking at the world and making sense of it. It involves knowledge and, necessarily, it embodies a certain understanding of what that knowledge entails.

Postpositivist Worldview

Theory verification; a deterministic philosophy in which causes (probably) determine effects or outcomes. It is based on careful observation and measurement of the objective reality that exists “out there” in the world. It emphasizes objective reality and seeks to uncover generalizable truths through empirical evidence and scientific methods

Conjectural

States that absolute truth can never be found.

Constructivist Worldview

Theory generation; believe that individuals seek understanding of the world in which they live and work. The basic generation of meaning is always social, arising in and out of interaction with a human community. It focuses on subjective realities, interpreting knowledge as constructed through social interactions and individual experiences.

Transformative Worldview

Change-oriented; holds that research needs to be entwined with a political agenda that may change the lives of participants, institutions, and the researcher’s life. Address issues of empowerment, inequality, oppression, domination, suppression, alienation. Provides a voice for participants, raising consciousness and advancing an agenda for change to improve their lives.

Pragmatic Worldview

It emphasizes the consequences and real-world applications of ideas and theories, prioritizing what works and is useful over abstract principles or absolute truths.

Critical Theory

concerned with empowering human beings to transcend the constraints placed on them by race, class, and gender.

Queer Theory

characterized by a variety of methods and strategies relating to individual identity

Qualitative Research

Study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them.

Reflexivity

States how the role of researchers in the study and their personal background, culture, and experiences hold potential for shaping interpretations, such as the themes they advance and the meaning they ascribe to the data.

Narrative

Explore individual’s stories to describe the lives of people.

Biographical Study

form of narrative study in which the researcher writes and records the experiences of another person’s life

Autoethnography

written and recorded by the individuals who are the subject of the study

Oral History

consists of gathering personal reflections of events and their causes and effects from one individual or several individuals

Phenomenological Study

describes the common meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a concept or a phenomenon.

Hermeneutical Phenomenology

It is not only a description but it is also an interpretive process in which the researcher makes an interpretation of the meaning of the lived experiences.

Transcendental Phenomenology

In this design the researcher develops a textural description of the experiences of the persons (what participants experienced), a structural description of their experiences (how they experienced it in terms of the conditions, situations, or context), and a combination of the textural and structural descriptions to convey an overall essence of the experience.

Grounded Theory

Explore common experiences of individuals to develop a theory

Ethnography

Explore the shared culture of a group of people.

Case Study

Developing an in-depth description and analysis of a case or multiple cases

Autobiography

This form of biographical writing is the narrative account of a person’s life that he or she has personally written or otherwise recorded

Chronology

This is a common approach for undertaking a narrative form of writing in which the author presents the life in stages or steps according to the age of the individual

Epiphanies

These are special events in an individual’s life that represent turning points. They vary in their impact from minor to major epiphanies, and they may be positive or negative.

Historical Context

These are the contexts in which the researcher presents the life of the participant. The context may be the participant’s family, society, or the historical, social, or political trends of the participant’s times

Life Course Stages

These are stages in an individual’s life or key events that become the focus for the biographer

Life History

This is a form of biographical writing in which the researcher reports an extensive record of a person’s life as told to the researcher

Oral History

In this biographical approach, the researcher gathers personal recollections of events and their causes and effects from an individual or several individuals. This information may be collected through tape recordings or through written works of individuals who have died or are still living. It often is limited to the distinctly “modern” sphere and to accessible people

Progressive-regressive Method

This is an approach to writing a narrative in which the researcher begins with a key event in the participant’s life and then works forward and backward from that event

Restorying

This is an approach in narrative data analysis in which the researchers retell the stories of individual experiences, and the new story typically has a beginning, a middle, and an ending

Single Individual

This is the person studied in a narrative research. This person may be an individual with great distinction or an ordinary person. This person’s life may be a lesser life, a great life, a thwarted life, a life cut short, or a life miraculous in its unapplauded achievement

Stories

These are aspects that surface during an interview in which the participant describes a situation, usually with a beginning, a middle, and an end, so that the researcher can capture a complete idea and integrate it, intact, into the qualitative narrative.

Clusters of Meaning

This is the third step in phenomenological data analysis, in which the researcher clusters the statements into themes or meaning units, removing overlapping and repetitive statements

Epoche, or bracketing

This is the first step in “phenomenological reduction,” the process of data analysis in which the researcher sets aside, as far as is humanly possible, all preconceived experiences to best understand the experiences of participants in the study

essential, invariant structure (or essence)

This is the goal of the phenomenologist, to reduce the textural (what) and structural (how) meanings of experiences to a brief description that typifies the experiences of all of the participants in a study. All individuals experience it; hence, it is invariant, and it is a reduction to the “essentials” of the experiences

Horizonalization

This is the second step in the phenomenological data analysis, in which the researcher lists every significant statement relevant to the topic and gives it equal value

Lived experiences

This term is used in phenomenological studies to emphasize the importance of individual experiences of people as conscious human beings

Structural Description

From the first three steps in phenomenological data analysis, the researcher writes a description of “how” the phenomenon was experienced by individuals in the study (Moustakas, 1994). The researcher writes a “structural” description of an experience, addressing how the phenomenon was experienced. It involves seeking all possible meanings, looking for divergent perspectives, and varying the frames of reference about the phenomenon or using imaginative variation.

Textural description

From the first three steps in phenomenological data analysis, the researcher writes about what was experienced, a description of the meaning individuals have experienced

Phenomenon

This is the central concept being examined by the phenomenologist. It is the concept being experienced by subjects in a study, which may include psychological concepts such as grief, anger, or love.