Editors: Glynis M Breakwell, Jonathan A Smith and Daniel B Wright

Pub Date: April 2012

Pages: 616pp

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About the Book

Welcome to the Companion Website for Breakwell: Research Methods in Psychology 4e.

Research Methods in Psychology has been substantially revised in its fourth edition. Continuing to offer enviable coverage of the research methods that psychology students at intermediate levels need to cover in their course, the textbook has now been broadened to cover the full suite of beginner level research methods too. The result is extensive coverage of psychological methods, both quantitative and qualitative, and a textbook that will serve students perfectly from day one in their course at university.

Research Methods in Psychology in its fourth edition includes:

  • Extended statistical coverage, including new chapters on Descriptive Statistics, Inferential Statistics, ANOVA, Regression and Correlation, and Latent Variable Models.
  • Further new chapters on Content Analysis and Writing Up Your Research.
  • New introductory sections placing each method in context and showing students how they relate to the bigger ‘real world’ picture.
  • Intuitive structure and visual layout makes the book easy to navigate so you can quickly find the content you need.

This textbook is ideal for beginner and intermediate level psychological research methods students worldwide.

For more information about the editors and contributors, and endorsements from academics, click on the relevant link below:

About the Editors and Contributors

Tip: Click on the editors's name below to view their biography. Click again to collapse.

Dame Glynis M. Breakwell

has been a Professor of Psychology for over 20 years and is currently the Vice Chancellor of the University of Bath. Her research focuses upon identity process theory and social representations, leadership in complex organisations, and the psychology of risk management, perception and communication. She has published more than 20 books, several of which are on research methods. She is an adviser to government and private sector companies on the use of psychological methods and theories.

Marianna E. Carlucci

received her PhD in psychology from Florida International University. She is an Assistant Professor at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore. Her main research area is in eyewitness memory.

Adrian Coyle

is a senior lecturer and the Course Director for the MSc in social psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey. His research and publications have addressed a range of topics, principally psychological issues in religion and spirituality, identity, bereavement and sexuality. The vast majority of his research is qualitative, employing a range of methods. With Evanthia Lyons, he was editor of Analysing Qualitative Data in Psychology.

Rudi Dallos

is Professor and Director of Clinical Psychology at Plymouth University. His clinical work specialises in family therapy which includes live and recorded observation of family dynamics. His research interests include explorations of family dynamics in relation to eating disorders and self-harm and attachment dynamics. Recent publications include An Introduction to Family Therapy, Reflective Practice in Psychotherapy and Counselling and Research Methods in Counselling and Psychotherapy.

Virginia Eatough

is a lecturer in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Birkbeck University of London where she teaches qualitative research methods and critical analysis. Her primary research focus is the study of emotion and emotional experience from a phenomenological psychology perspective. In particular she is interested in the role of feelings in our emotional life. Primarily, she uses hermeneutic– phenomenological approaches, such as interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), as well as techniques that emphasise accessing the tacit pre-reflective dimensions of experience, such as focusing and meditation. Other related and ongoing research interests include adult crying, alexithymia, living with chronic progressive illness such as Parkinson’s disease, and developing the relationship between phenomenological methods and neuroscience.

Chris Fife-Schaw

is a Professor and former Head of Psychology at the University of Surrey. His research has included studies of perceptions of food-related hazards, young people’s responses to AIDS/HIV, public responses to genetic technologies and risk perception and communication of water-borne hazards. He lectures in social psychology, research methods and structural equation modelling, and his research interests are in risk perception, models of behavioural regulation and developing alternative measures of attitudes that do not involve questionnaires.

Karen Henwood

is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University.
She has long-standing research interests in qualitative research methodologies and methods in the social sciences and psychology. Her 1992 article (with Nick Pidgeon) in the British Journal of Psychology ‘Qualitative research and psychological theorising’ was followed by many co-authored book chapters on grounded theory. Most recently she has written about qualitative longitudinal/temporal research methods for the APA Handbook of Qualitative Methods in Psychology. She has published findings from a number of large-scale, qualitative and mixed methods projects, and works mainly in interdisciplinary fields of inquiry (gender, risk, environment).

Graham Hole

is a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex. He has a wide experience of using different methodologies in psychological research, having started his career performing observational studies of animal behaviour before shifting to using psychophysical techniques to investigate low-level visual perception. His current research interests centre around using experimental methods to investigate two different areas of cognitive psychology: ‘pure’ research on face recognition, and ‘applied’ research on perception and attention in relation to car driving. He has written 50 scientific papers and three books, including How to Design and Report Experiments, co-authored with Andy Field.

Kamala London

is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toledo.
Her research examines how we can tailor forensic proceedings to best suit children’s developing abilities. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on statistics and developmental psychology. She has served as an expert witness in about 20 states across the United States, at Fort Knox for the US Military and also in New Zealand. She has presented her research at dozens of national and international conferences, invited talks and in various publications. She has written over 25 publications, including two co-authored award-winning statistics textbooks. Her work has been cited by the United States Supreme Court.

Katherine McGuire

is a doctoral student in the psychology department at the University of Toledo. She teaches undergraduate courses in statistics and psychology. Her main interests include memory development in children, adolescents and young adults with an emphasis on psychology and the law.

Jeremy Miles

is a behavioural scientist working at the RAND Corporation, and is Professor of Quantitative Methods at the Pardee-RAND Graduate school. He is author of over 100 journal articles and several books, including Applying Regression and Correlation (with Mark Shevlin) and Discovering Statistics Using SAS (with Andy Field). He is associate editor of the British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology and statistical advisor to the editorial board of both the British Journal of Health Psychology and the British Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Lynne Millward

was an Occupational and Social Psychologist who practised applied psychology in the work and organisational domain for 20 years. Her research was oriented primarily towards informing organisational strategy and policy on issues such as equal opportunities, merger, diversity, recruitment, retention, training and development, appraisal, stress management and change management. This work was funded by a range of bodies and organisations, including the Economic and Social Research Council, the Ministry of Defence, QinetiQ, the National Health Service and the National Audit Office. She was author or co-author of three books: Understanding Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Organizational Research Methods and Basic Evaluation Methods: Analysing Performance, Practice and Procedure. At the time of her death in 2012, Lynne was Reader in the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey where she fulfilled the role of Undergraduate Course Director.

Nick Pidgeon

is Professor of Applied Psychology at Cardiff University. He has research interests in people’s perception of risk and its communication with particular applications to public policy decision making, environmental issues (such as biotechnology, nuclear power and climate change) and industrial safety. He has authored (jointly with Karen Henwood) a number of methodological papers on grounded theory for psychologists.

John Rust

is Professor of Psychometrics and Director of the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge. He is author of Modern Psychometrics, now in its third edition, as well as several psychometric tests and UK standardisation projects. His recent work focuses on the development of Concerto, an open source system for the administration of adaptive tests online.

Jonathan A. Smith

is Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck University of London. His main interests lie in the application of qualitative methods in psychology. He has edited a number of books in this area. He has also developed a particular qualitative approach, interpretative phenomenological analysis, and employed it in a wide range of research projects in psychology.

Patrick Sturgis

is Professor of Research Methodology and Director of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods. He has a BA in Psychology from the University of Liverpool and a Master of Science and PhD in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics. His research interests are in the areas of survey methodology, statistical modelling, public opinion and political behaviour, public understanding of science and technology, social capital, and social mobility. He is Principal Investigator of the Welcome Monitor Study and President of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA).

Daniella K. Villalba

is a graduate student at Florida International University. Her research interests centre around the interaction between psychology and the law. Her main research focus is eyewitness memory. Specifically, she is interested in the underlying factors that lead witnesses to become overconfident in line up identifications and in finding ways to prevent overconfidence. She is also interested in examining investigative interviewing techniques that can help witnesses provide more detailed and accurate accounts of the witnessed event. Finally, she is interested in examining the circumstances in which memory conformity is more likely to occur.

Daniel B. Wright

is a Professor of Legal Psychology at Florida International University. His interests are in human memory (particularly eyewitness reliability) and methodology (particularly statistics). He received the 2009 Psychonomics Society award for methodology.

Endorsements

“This 4th edition of Breakwell's Research Methods in Psychology is truly exceptional. Broad coverage of diverse methods with down-to-earth, jargon-free explanations that make clear not only the how but also the why of research methods. Students will come away with deeper appreciation of the thoroughness and value of scientific research in Psychology. One of the most accessible and comprehensive textbooks of its kind, this book is likely to engage the budding scientist in most students.” Harry Reis, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Department of Clinical & Social Psychology, University of Rochester

“Excellent coverage of qualitative methods. Students prefer it because they only need the one book. Covers all they need really.” Dr Maria Kontogianni, Nottingham Trent University, School of Education

“I like the way that different authors have contributed to the textbook. I think it is presented coherently and benefits from having each chapter written by an expert in that field.” Dr James Smith-Spark, Department of Psychology, London South Bank University

“This book provides an excellent introduction to both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, and also includes informative overviews of the many analyses and statistical procedures that are typically taught at undergraduate level. The text manages to be both comprehensive and accessible, with useful exercises to challenge and test the reader's knowledge. This book is very enlightening for both students and tutors alike." Dr Paul Richardson, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology, Sheffield Hallam University

If you would like to order a copy of Research Methods in Psychology you can order a copy here
© Glynis M Breakwell, Jonathan A Smith, Daniel B Wright, 2012