Summary
This worksheet on research methods utilized Trochim (2022) as the only source. This paper will include terminology associated with research principles and concentrate on several types of validity. The following discussion will review threats and the relationship between reliability and validity. Research principles are relevant to game designers, programmers, artists, writers, and producers because such professions require close interactions with people, and research can teach a person how to work well with various individuals. Specialists from the listed occupations can be more effective in accomplishing their goals by applying methods of research to understand the subject of their pursuits, convince someone to provide funds and maintain focus on the plan.
General Research Terms
Researchers use specific terminology and must comprehend the jargon utilized in scholarly settings. Two of the primary words are theoretical and empirical, with the former referring to a thorough work with theories and ideas and the latter concerning observations and measurements of reality. The next term is nomothetic, and it suggests prioritizing the general case over the individual when studying something. Furthermore, contemporary research can be described with the word probabilistic, which means probabilities of inferences. Finally, a significant concept in examining distinct topics is causal, which implies the importance of cause-effect relationships. The mentioned terms represent the general vocabulary needed to understand the analysis of a matter.
Validity
A critical element that must be considered in research is validity. In particular, external validity refers to the extent of the generalizability of a study’s conclusions to different people in dissimilar settings. External validity has certain threats, which can be defined as explanations of mistakes in a generalization made by a researcher. The dangers include people, place, and time, all of which may or may not be generalized to other contexts depending on the uniqueness or peculiarity of the initial participants, locations, or periods. Consequently, the research’s ability to generalize will be better when the study is replicated with specific changes regarding the threats.
Alongside external validity, research involves construct validity, which is the degree of generalizability of tests or measures to the concept of those tests or measures. Construct validity has several threats, the first one being an inadequate explanation of constructs before they are translated into measures or treatments. The two following dangers are mono-operation and mono-method bias, with the former not reflecting the intended concept due to focusing on a single element and the latter concerning mistakes related to measures or observations. The next two threats are the interaction of different treatments, which influence the final outcome, and the interaction of testing and treatment, which reflects if testing or measurement affects the groups. Construct validity is also at risk of restricted generalizability, confounding constructs, and threats that emerge from human nature, such as experimenter expectancies.
Research involves the relationship between validity and reliability and concerns internal validity. The concept of reliability represents the quality of measurements in terms of their consistency and repeatability. The connection between reliability and validity can be seen through their differences in reflecting measures, which can be reliable but not valid, or valid but not reliable, or both, or neither. In other words, the two terms are interconnected, but while reliability reflects stability, validity demonstrates accuracy. Furthermore, internal validity refers to the truthfulness of hypotheses regarding causal relationships. Internal validity is characterized by three major groups of threats. The single group incorporates criticism about studying only one party, the multiple groups consist of a critique concerning sets of participants, and the social group combines dangers that are due to social pressures.
The final type of validity in research is conclusion validity, which depicts the reasonability of reached conclusions. Conclusion validity has two kinds of errors, disregarding a present relationship and assuming that a relationship exists when it does not. Threats concerning the first error are low reliability of measures, random irrelevances that cause noise, and extreme variety of respondents. The second type of error causes risks due to the fishing and the error rate problem, which refers to conducting multiple analyses without adjusting the error rate.
Reference
Trochim, W. M. K. (2022). The research methods knowledge base. Conjoint.ly.