The main methods in psychosocial research

Psychosocial research marked a break with the traditions that had dominated scientific thought. in psychology and other especially social disciplines. Among other things, it has made it possible to generate orderly and systematic ways of making scientific knowledge and of understand reality (that is, research methods), avoiding the classic separation between individual and society.

Next we will make a general review of the traditions that have marked psychology as a scientific discipline and we will describe the concepts of methodology and method, to finally present the main characteristics of psychosocial research close to the critical orientations of contemporary thought.

• Related article: "What is social psychology?"

Main traditions of research in psychology

Being a scientific discipline, psychology has been part of the traditions and transformations that have historically marked the field of science. The paradigm that has traditionally dominated this field has been the positivist, which is based on the idea that there is a reality that can be revealed through a methodology and a method specifically: the hypothetical-deductive, which offers us to explain, predict and manipulate the functioning of that reality.

However (and given that said paradigm is also established through the separation between nature and culture), when trying to explain social phenomena, which did not seem to follow the same patterns as natural phenomena, the hypothetico-deductive method came up against some challenges. Many of them were solved through the calculation of probabilities, that is, from foreseeing future behaviors, taking care that external factors did not intervene in the process, or in other words, evaluating those probabilities in an objective, neutral and impartial manner.

Some time later, this paradigm faced new challenges, when through the relativistic theory, the chaos theory and feminist epistemologies, among other theories of knowledge, was put into evidence that the position of the researcher is not neutral, but it is a position located in a body, an experience, a history and a specific context; which also inevitably affects the reality that is being studied.

From there, very diverse research methods have emerged and that allow taking into account the field of experience as a key element; as well as valid and legitimate, in the construction of knowledge.

• You may be interested in: "The 9 differences between qualitative and quantitative research"

Methodology or Method? Examples and differences

The concepts of methodology and method are widely used in research and are also frequently confused or used as synonyms. Although there is no single or definitive way to explain them, and they don't necessarily have to be separated, Below we offer a proposal for the definition of both methodology and method, as well as some differences in The models.

Methodology: put the tools somewhere

By the term “methodology” we generally refer to the theoretical perspective in which the procedure or system that we will follow during an investigation is framed. For example, the traditions of contemporary and Western science are often divided into two broad frameworks: qualitative methodology and quantitative methodology.

The quantitative methodology is the one that has been especially valued in the scientific field and is based on the method hypothetical-deductive that seeks to establish probabilities and predictions appealing to the impartiality of whoever investigate.

On the other hand, qualitative methodology has gained ground in the area of ​​social sciences and in critical orientations because it allows the elaboration of understandings about a reality, recovering the experience of those who are implicated in that reality, including the person who investigate. From this, the concept of responsibility and ethics in research has taken on fundamental importance.

In addition, starting from there, a methodological-inductive model was configured, which does not seek to explain a reality but to understand it; which implies that an action or a phenomenon is not only described, but that when it is described, it is interpreted. In addition, they are interpreted by a person or a group of people located in a specific context, with which it is understood that this interpretation is not free of judgments; it is an interpretation elaborated in correspondence with the characteristics of that context.

Both the quantitative methodology and the qualitative methodology have criteria of scientific rigor that make their proposals valid in the field of science and can be shared among different people.

Method: the tool and the instructions

On the other hand, a “method” is an orderly and systematic way that we use to produce something; so in the field of research, the "method" usually makes a more specific reference to the research technique used and the way in which it is used.

The method, then, is what we use to gather information that we are going to analyze and that will later allow us to offer a set of results, reflections, conclusions, proposals, etc. An example of a method can be interviews or experiments that are used to collect and group a set of data, such as statistical figures, texts, public documents.

Both the methodology and the research method are defined from the questions that we want to respond with our research, that is, according to the problems that we have raised.

An approach to psychosocial research

As we have seen, traditionally scientific knowledge has been produced from an important dissociation between the psychic and the social, which has given rise to the already classic debates between nature-culture, individual-society, innate-learned, etc.

In fact, if we go a little further, we can see that it is also based on the cartesian binomial mind-body, which has resulted in the divisions between subject-object and subjectivity-objectivity; where objectivity is frequently overvalued in the scientific field: reason over experience, a reason that As we have said before, it is presented as neutral, but it is established among a multiplicity of norms, practices and relationships.

So the term psychosocial refers to the connection between psychic elements and social factors that configure identities, subjectivities, relationships, norms of interaction, etc. It is a theoretical perspective and a methodological position that tries to undo the false divisions between the social and the psychic.

The critical perspective in psychosocial research

In some contexts, the psychosocial perspective has come very close to critical theories of science. (those that pay special attention to the effects of science in the reproduction of inequalities social).

In other words, a psychosocial perspective that is also critical would not only seek to understand or interpret a reality, but locate the relations of power and domination that make up that reality to generate crises and transformations.

Incorporate a critical perspective that has to do with reflecting to promote emancipatory action; make alliances from detecting the power relations that hold and at the same time open certain possibilities of action; make an explicit critique of domain relations assuming that the act of research affects and impacts the specific field that is being studied.

Examples of Methods in Psychosocial Research

Methods in psychosocial research have been categorized under different names for ease of use, rigor, and reliability. However, when taking into consideration how the person who investigates affects the reality that he investigates; and that the methods are not neutral either, they can share among themselves some of the parameters. That is, they are flexible methods.

In this sense, any orderly and systematic way of collecting information to understand a phenomenon under which purpose of blurring the boundaries between the psychic and the social, could be a research method psychosocial.

Some examples of the methods that have been especially relevant because they have allowed the previously described to be put into play are the Speech analysis, mobile drifts in research, biographical methods such as life stories, autoethnography, ethnography, and the now classic in-depth interviews.

There are also some methods that are more participatory, such as participatory action research and narrative techniques, where mainly that knowledge is co-constructed between the researcher and those who participate, thus generating a horizontal relationship during the process. research process and with it, question the barrier between two practices that have been understood as separate: research and intervention.

Bibliographic references:

• Biglia, B. & Bonet-Martí, J. (2009). The construction of narratives as a psychosocial research method. Shared writing practices. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(1) [Online]. Retrieved April 11, 2018. Available in https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/6521202/2666.pdf? AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1523443283&Signature=PdsP0jW0bLXvReFWLhqyIr3qREk%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DNarrative_Construction_as_a_Psychosocial.pdf
• Pujal i Llombart, M. (2004). The identity. pp: 83-138. In Ibanez, T. (Ed.). Introduction to social psychology. Editorial UOC: Barcelona.
• Iniguez, R. (2003). Social psychology as criticism: continuity, stability and effervescence three decades after the crisis. Inter-American Journal of Psychology, 37(2): 221-238.