OVERVIEW

What is a good theory, and what are its characteristics? In this part of the book, we'll discuss several theories in psychology, along with methods for using and evaluating formal theories to understand experimental results. We'll be focusing in large part on the theories rather than on specific methods of data analysis. If you want to understand research methodology, you can't really succeed without first understanding what you're trying to accomplish by using these methods, and this requires an understanding of theories and how they work.

Whether the theory is implicit or explicit, as you're conducting research you have something in mind that you're trying to observe or demonstrate. In other words, you're typically trying to find a pattern in the data that you can make sense of. Your purpose, if possible, is to make some more general inferences from your specific data. So, you hope that your end result will be some general rule or description. In a way, you can think about statistics as a method for finding some order in your data, but that's not what comes first. You begin the process of conducting research by formulating a question that you want to answer, and this question will be grounded in a particular theory (either your own or someone else's). This part on psychology begins with a discussion of theory in an abstract sense. What are theories? What makes a theory good or bad?