What Are the Main Perspectives in the Study of Psychology? What Research Methods Are Used to Study These Perspectives?

What are the main perspectives in the study of psychology? What research methods are used to study these perspectives? Every topic in psychology can be looked at in a number of different ways and various different approaches can be adopted for each topic. These approaches are known as perspectives (i.e. view) that involve certain assumptions (i.e. beliefs) about human behaviour: the way they function, which aspects of them are worthy of study and what research methods are appropriate for undertaking this study. There may be several different theories within an approach but they all share the above common assumptions. Different perspectives have different research methods. The “Gloria Tapes” of 1975 are a good example of how different perspectives are used to address the same problems in a client’s life, as they are looking at her problems from different viewpoints (http://www.metafilter.com, accessed February 2012). For the purpose of this essay, we will be looking at the five main psychological perspectives. These include the psychodynamic, cognitive, behavioural, biological and humanistic perspectives.
A wide range of research methods are used in psychology. In its simplest terms, Martin Shuttleworth (2008) defines research as “In the broadest sense of the word, the definition of research includes any gathering of data, information and facts for the advancement of knowledge” Types of research methods include laboratory and field experiments, case studies, correlations, interviews, observations and questionnaires. These research methods fall into two basic categories: quantitive and qualitive. Qualitative research gathers research that is not in numerical form and is useful for studies at the individual level (i.e. client centred therapy). Quantitive research gathers data in numerical form, which can be put into categories, in order or measured in units of measurement. This type of data can be used to construct graphs and tables of raw data. Experiments

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