Understanding Psychology and its Methods
Understanding Psychology and its Methods
In a world driven by experience, the quest to find the best method and approach to scientific and psychological studies continues.
McGartland and Polgar (1994) contend that psychology can be clearly seen to have two distinct methods of investigation- 1) The empirico- mathematical and 2) the culture interpretive method. In recognizing this, it is still often the empirico-mathematical approach that is dominantly used and the commitment to this method has, according to McGartland & Polgar (1994) not been successful in advancing the discipline of psychology, instead creating conceptual confusion. Rather then relying solely on one method it is suggested that in place must be a neat combination of both the quantitative and the qualitative that govern inquiry. The aim of this is to give rise to all aspects of the person being studied with the integration of the culture- interpreting method seeking knowledge about people in natural settings, revealing the context out of which personal meanings can arise in the everyday settings and the empirico-mathematical that reduces human nature to ‘specific, operationally defined variables, the level of which can be objectively and consensually observed or measured.’(p21)
Kuhn (1970 in McGartland & Polgar, 1994) questions whether scientific discoveries may be the source of the paradigm shifts that define the reinterpretation and restructuring of the discipline that makes it difficult to predict what will next lend form and direction to theoretical formulations and research findings of psychology.
Engel (1992) also pays close attention to the notion of paradigm shifts, and in doing so argues that while medicine has made many advances since the 17th century they are still however bound by the ‘school of thought in which scientists as objective observers are to regard nature as independent from themselves and unaffected by their act of observation’ (p335). This is in accordance with the predominantly used empirico-mathematical methodology in psychology.
Under the 20th century paradigm characterized by Einstein and Heisenberg in Engel (1992) science is defined, as ‘what is being studied is inseparable from the scientist, who devises mental constructs of his/her experiences with it as a means of characterizing his/her understanding of its properties and behaviour’ (p336). The scientific world’s somewhat unwillingness to adapt this approach is at the heart of Engel’s argument.
This I foresee is more widely appropriate model, with the observational component (the measurable and categorical that is evidently in plain view e.g....