Why You Should Understand the Research Process

Hello. My name is Dr Yeah, Bogota.

I am a lecturer of social psychology at the University of Birmingham.

And today what I'm going to be talking about is research methods and economics.

And when I talk about research methods and economics,

I should make things a little bit clear on that

because that's a rather broad area to think about.

It's not about statistics. That's other courses.

It's not about research methodology. It's not about the psychology of money.

By itself,

the focus here is going to be a discussion

on the trajectory of being a psychology researcher.

How the research actually gets constructed, used, applied.

That's the sort of thing I really want to talk about.

So there are four main areas we will be discussing today.

The first will be the life cycle of a project from concept to application.

And then we're going to talk about the funding pipeline

because everyone wants to know where the money is.

Everyone wants to know how things are paid for. Everything costs money.

So it's worthwhile knowing that when you look at research in psychology as well,

we'll also talk about how information is disseminated in number three.

Our third little bit, which is how it works. Who pays?

Uh, and then finally,

we'll talk about the applications of psychology against economics.

So that is obviously science needs to have some sort of public good.

You can't just act in a way that presumes

that whatever you're doing has a direct application,

you actually have to use it.

You have to find a reason why why it's used.

You probably already know that the majority of

funding for all science comes from you,

the taxpayer.

Every time you're at ASDA and you purchase that Coke that little bit of tax well,

guess where that's going to the government.

The government then takes your money and then puts it towards research,

often more often than not.

So it's very useful to know how this stuff

actually works and why would be using why you,

as a person, would be using it in one way or another.

And then we'll conclude on a bit of a discussion around the controversies,

the debates,

the questions that you might be thinking about at the end of this discussion

around the life cycle of publication psychology as a science and more throughout.

I'm going to be using an example study that I'm going to go ahead and get started with.

So I'm going to start with.

Why does this

matter?

I'm going to give you a little bit of scenarios.

Let's say, for example, your friend says something that interests you.

All right, Uh, let's say, for example, you've you're now 18.

You're swiping on those data naps. You've downloaded hinge tinder bumble.

Plenty of fish coffee meets bagel, trying to recall them all.

But I'm an old man, so it might take me a while.

I'm very sorry to say this, uh, I don't know if tick tocks of dating application,

but I have a friend who met her husband on TIKTOK.

So I guess that also counts.

But let's say, for example, you want to find your friend says, Well,

there's research showing that when men

look at the camera when men are directly looking at the camera,

they're considered to be unattractive.

When women look directly at the camera and they're dating profile shots,

they're considered to be attractive.

You say no way. You're you're like I'm interested in dudes who look me in the eye

who look at me like I'm an equal and therefore what I find their tiktok,

their bumbled, their Facebook, their whatever I want their faith,

their picture to look me dead in the eye.

And that's what I find attractive.

There's no way anyone else will find this attractive. So you would say

so You go online, you do a quick Google search.

You find the academic paper or your friend was

talking about you find that the paper is there.

It does exist. You click on the paper and it says you cannot access.

You must pay this much money in order to exit. You must pay £120 for that.

Wait a second. Why? Why is that the case

and makes matters worse?

You notice that there's a line that says paid for by a government grant

again. Your coke that you purchased

at the ASDA was had a taxi to associate with it.

Some of the attacks went to pay the government which then paid for this grant.

Why is this the case? How is this acceptable?

Okay,

that's one scenario.

Another one is

You are You've got a job at the local council.

You actually have

the idea of trying to improve people's health through research backed methods.

Your idea is I need to improve people's health one way or another.

So how do you find good quality research?

How do you actually get someone to read the research?

How do you get someone to conduct high quality research?

You look around and you don't find the stuff that you're interested in.

Say, for example,

you want to make a case that there should

be more sporting clubs available to improve psychological well being

in young people in the local council area.

You know that mental health is an issue there.

So you want to find a study about this,

You don't find it or you find peripheral studies.

So you say I'm going to just find people to run a study for me.

How do you get people to research this stuff?

How do you get access to the old research in order to confirm your current research?

Another one.

So you see a paper in academic journal.

You see, it's called the journal of blah, blah, blah or yada, yada, yada.

Whatever you want to call it and you see the paper

and it looks pretty interesting when they click on it.

The journal has ads on the side. It has all these weird pop ups.

And you're like, Do I trust this journal? Do I trust the results that they have?

Should I trust this?

You've never heard of this journal?

You've never heard of this journal of blah, blah, blah, yada yada.

It's done by this publisher you've never heard of. How can you trust this?

This brings up the point that knowing how research across all these scenarios,

how it works to create disseminates,

disseminates all findings, things that can be understood outside of academia.

Outside of the areas we look at,

it matters because it ensures our quality and our

understanding that what we're doing actually fit something.

You have definitely heard of scientific studies that do exist out there.

They are like,

I don't really trust this where you find studies that do exist out there and

you are unable to access them or you are potentially with someone who like Ah,

I wonder if there's research about this and you don't

you don't know where you can find it or worse,

no one's done it or worse.

You don't know what the funding is like

knowing where money comes from and the role money

has in research and how it affects research,

findings and outcomes matters.

Knowing the system, knowing how these things fit together,

knowing how research is created, how research is published,

how researchers first thought up,

how research is is disseminated through publishers and academic journals.

This stuff matters because it tells us three key things.

The first is it tells us where to place our trust.

The second is knowing how can we use this information

and when can we use this information?

And finally, where we can go to make sure our information is solid?

So that is, where do we place our trust after all these things are put together?

So where do we place our trust generally,

how we use it and when can we use it against trust?

I hope that clarifies exactly this sort of research pipeline,

and we're looking to aim to do within this in the next section.

What we're gonna be talking about is the life cycle of a research project.

We're not going to go too much into depth and two and any one thing.

But then we'll clarify more as we go through.

And hopefully by the end of this little session you

will be have an understanding of how money works.

How, uh,

research projects have a lifecycle exactly publication

where how it works and who pays.

And finally, the economic implications of psychology.

Overall, join us and we'll talk more about this soon enough.