Want to be a better consumer of social science research? Here’s a short crib sheet for determining the general legitimacy and generalizability of virtually any social science study. Keep in mind that this crib sheet is not going to be 100% accurate or relevant to …
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This is especially important during these days of the internet, where studies are blasted out and spread like wildfire. Who’s vetting this stuff? Journalists are only too happy to pass it along to their readers.
Great input! I’ve saved a copy as an aide-memoire for teaching undergrads in library research sessions(how to look at abstracts).
Good start, but a bit misleading. My first hesitancy was that Dr. Grohol has a Psy.D, not a research oriented Ph.D. Psy.D.s are clinical by nature, although there are many good Psy.D. researchers. As a Ph.D. who works with Ph.D. graduate students, I’m aware that there are many types of research that are valuable in many different ways. This article is specifically geared toward clinical psychology and clinical trials research. Within that context, then I say great start. In the broader research arena, I would love to see acknowledgment of the many types of quantitative, mixed methods, and qualitative research methods.
Ryan,
With all due respect I’m sure you are good at some aspects of research. As a Ph.D. myself, I find that even Ph.D.’s are not all experts in the many forms of research. Some are very good at quantitative but less competent at qualitative work and vice-versa. I’ve even sensed Ph.D. academicians putting down qualitative research used in doctoral dissertations. In my opinion, it is almost impossible to be very good at all or most of the methodologies. This can be seen in many Ph.D.’s hiring statisticians to do their dirty work of inferential stats processing and analysis.
I’m sure you realize that on this kind of forum you cannot even begin to scratch the surface of what research is because you are so limited to a few paragraphs. The world of research methodology is vast and voluminous, so much so that there are even whole journals dedicated to the study of studying (or doing research).
I get a chuckle or a smirk when I see Ph.D.’s either strongly or gently putting down the Psy.D. guys. I think that is quite unfortunate. I’ve seen Psy.D. dissertations that are as good as Ph.D. ones. The reality is that academia is negatively biased against Psy.D.’s and relegates them to second class academicians. This is vastly evident by the many graduate academic departments that tend to use Psy.D.’s only in clinical supervision courses. These institutions give most or all the regular courses to the Ph.D.’s. I know Psy.D.’s that run circles around Ph.D.’s including me.
Unless I misunderstood you, I sense a little bit of a put-down tone to your Psy.D. brethren. I don’t find that kind of attitude towards Ph.D.’s coming from Psy.D’s. Please correct me if I am wrong. I welcome it.
Best regards,
Samuel Lopez De Victoria, Ph.D.
http://www.DrSam.tv
I’ll just add that the article is indeed geared toward research that is likely to make mainstream news in psychology and mental health. So while a new perception or beliefs experiment might be intellectually interesting (and there are dozens published every year), they are not likely to make the news headlines. Obviously a short “crib sheet” for consumers isn’t going to cover all possible experimental and research permutations.
As a clinician, I appreciate any effort to educate consumers of mental health services regarding the “product”. However, the reality of the situation is that most people – including clinicians (especially those in private practice) – do not have access to the peer-reviewed literature. The guess is that it takes about seven years for the science to actually reach the public and, even then, it is truncated into the small sound/print bites that the media favors so much — often incorrectly or only presented partially.
Good post and good comments. I’ve taken science reporting to task from time to time for some of the same reasons noted above. One of my favorite gotchas wasn’t listed above, though: How well were the variables defined in the first place? Are you studying what you think you’re studying? I’ve seen research reports that defined “spirituality” as church attendance, but the operational differences between the different groups studied were membership in a caring community and regular social and physical contact (hugs & handshakes) versus living alone without being a member of a social group that met weekly, looked after each other, etc. I’m not sure the researchers were observing the effects of spirituality so much as the effects of being a member of a warm human community.
I find that good research will have an end result in the workability of what was being discovered. That simply means, that a common denominator can be derived from all of the results which will help one to evaluate all other data in reference to it. If it doesn’t do that, then in my eyes the research is incomplete. This is probably why medicine is more profit driven than anything else.