Qualitative vs Quantitative Undergrad Research Experience

[psyched_trojan2015]

Hello all,

 

I'm sure some of you have seen me post on here, but I want to raise another question I'm curious about...

 

If I'm interested in going to grad school to obtain a PhD Social Psychology, what type of research would benefit me most? I understand the question depends on the program itself and the applicant's interests, but I've been questioning what I, myself, want to get out of my undergrad experience.

 

I'm a junior at my school (some private uni in top 25 on usnews for a more superficial idea) and I'm majoring in Psychology. I thought I wanted to get a PhD in Clinical Psychology or an MSW, so I got an RA position at the medical school that studies smoking cessation effects and the role genes play in it. While the experience has been good so far, I'm becoming more interested in the field of Social Psychology...the behaviors, etc. My goal is research criminal behavior (morals, personality) and improve intervention programs for particular juvenile delinquents, but more on the academia side, as opposed to clinical. For this reason, I'm interested in finding work that is more qualitative based. At my current lab, I'm hoping to stay at least year (or until I graduate) and hopefully have a co-authored piece published and presented.

 

I've decided not to apply to programs directly out of graduation because I'm going to burn out. So, I'm thinking about taking a year or two off to focus on research and dabbling more into the realms of social psychology. As of now, I'm focused on maintaining my grades and taking classes in SPSS to make myself more marketable. I have an overall GPA of 3.5 and a Psychology GPA of 3.7. I haven't taken the GREs yet, but I will be in the future (don't really want to mix all that while I'm still an undergrad!). I'm hoping to also have an honors thesis done by graduation on my topic of interest (morals, personality, and its function in criminal behavior, particularly high school students in the LA county).

 

Okay, so I guess my concern is: are there any Social Psychology programs that are more qualitative-based? I find myself gravitating toward this aspect of research over quantitative. Also, I hate to turn this into a "chance" post, but am I on the right track? I feel so stressed! Thanks!!

[spunky]

Okay, so I guess my concern is: are there any Social Psychology programs that are more qualitative-based? I find myself gravitating toward this aspect of research over quantitative. Also, I hate to turn this into a "chance" post, but am I on the right track? I feel so stressed! Thanks!!

 

this sounds like quite an interesting question, given that Social Personality Psychology tends to proud itself for it's strong quantitative tradition and its solid emphasis on research methods. 

[Guest |||]

this sounds like quite an interesting question, given that Social Personality Psychology tends to proud itself for it's strong quantitative tradition and its solid emphasis on research methods. 

 

Social psych in many ways relates more to the research done in other social science/humanities.  By focusing on this distinction it helps to seperate itself, though the extent to which this distinction is meaningful and true, probably varies from school to school.

 

 

As a whole though, psych is largely quant based.  Some clinical programs might not be, but its also likely research isn't a large component of those programs anyway.

[Socially Awkward]

Sort of mirroring the previous posts, I'm in social psych and have yet to ever really use qualitative data (if only as a manipulation check). 

 

I would follow the comment about doing the research you want to and then having that program of research decide for you if you should be doing qualitative or quantitative data collection/analysis. So, my suggestion then, is to look up a few studies doing the research that interests you and looking at their methods. Also, play close attention to what universities and what programs of psych the authors are in. More than likely, those are the programs you will be applying to in the future.

 

Hope that helps.

[spunky]

Social psych in many ways relates more to the research done in other social science/humanities.  By focusing on this distinction it helps to seperate itself, though the extent to which this distinction is meaningful and true, probably varies from school to school.

 

true... but it still doesn't take away from the fact that it's still pretty heavy in terms of quant methods, particularly because a lot of the research done in Social Psych is correlational, which kind of pushes people to learn how to use statistical controls.

 

i mean, even if you just google JPSP (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) one of the first hits you get is Baron & Kenny's oh-so-classic-of-classics article on mediation and moderation, and it's not unusual to find some pretty deep quantitative, methods-oriented (e.g. simulation studies) articles there... as opposed to qualitative methods, which i think i've only seen once on JPSP?

 

i do agree with you though that clinical tends to be lighter on this IF the emphasis is more on applied training.

 

i think counselling/social work does a lot more qualitative stuff than psychology, at least that's the impression i've got from the projects i've worked on in the past.  

Edited February 17, 2014 by spunky

[lewin]

Social psychology is not qualitative, it's strongly quantitative and, in my experience, even looks down at qualitative research as like quaint or amusing but lacking the ability to rule out alternative explanations and therefore ultimately just fodder for talk introductions. Prototypical reaction to qualitative finding: "Oh, that's an interesting idea. How can we test it in an experiment?" I can't recall reading anything in a social psych journal that was descriptive or qualitative. More so, social psychology is strongly experimental. I flipped through the most recent JPSP and my casual tally found about 2/3rds of studies were experiments, not just correlational.

 

I agree with the others that you should do the research you like; I just mean that if you want to do qualitative then social psychology is barking up the wrong tree.

Edited February 18, 2014 by lewin

[Guest |||]

one of the first hits you get is Baron & Kenny's oh-so-classic-of-classics article on mediation and moderation

 

True, for better or worse.

[jakem]

I'm in social psych as well, and just finished going through the PhD interview circuit. There is a large push in the social psych world right now for increased focus on quantitative methods, including social network theory, advanced programming skills (R, MatLab), and advanced statistics. Even data normally thought of as "qualitative" (interviews, text) is being increasingly analyzed through quantitative means, as wacky as that is.

 

I personally think this is a bad thing, and that dismissing qualitative data as "unscientific" misses a huge pool of valuable information. But anyways: if you really want to get into social psych, I'd get as much quantitative skills as possible. If you feel more drawn to qualitative methods, I'd take a look at cultural anthropology. There has been great qualitative research coming out of that discipline for decades.

[lewin]

Even data normally thought of as "qualitative" (interviews, text) is being increasingly analyzed through quantitative means, as wacky as that is.

 

This is true, people love that Pennebaker LIWC software. I'm on a paper that used it for a study--very light on the descriptive, heavy on the quant angle (e.g., correlating the text ratings with other things).