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Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? What for? Because of who? Whose? Did it really? How come? Oh really?
These questions are all part of a scientific investigation!
Scientific investigation is the process through which scientists pose a research question and then observe and test varying phenomena. It also refers to the data collection and analysis after the experiment and the guidelines psychologists abide by when conducting research. However, scientific investigations are also daily instances when we make an observation and try to figure out the solution. Scientific investigations allow us to think critically about the world around us, especially in sciences and psychology.
Although scientific investigations are sometimes seen as synonymous with the scientific method, they should be viewed as the umbrella term that the scientific method falls under.
The method of scientific investigation follows a couple steps that help ensure that the research being conducted is as reliable and replicable as possible. Its sibling, the scientific method, has more structural and rigid steps that are to be followed.
For more on the scientific method, click here!
For scientific investigation, there are a couple key parts of the study that need to be done in order to have it follow the steps of the scientific investigation. Researchers need to make sure they design and execute an experiment following the scientific method, analyze their data, and ensure that all ethical guidelines are met.
Chances are, you use aspects of scientific investigation every single day, simply by asking a question and trying to figure out the answer.
An example of scientific investigation is one of the most famous (or infamous) psychological studies, known as the Little Albert Experiment. The experimenters were curious about the effects of conditioning – the concept that a person or animal can be conditioned (trained) to elicit a response from an unrelated stimulus – on a human. Ivan Pavlov showed that animals can be conditioned in the late 1800s, and the Little Albert experimenters wanted to see if the same would be possible with an infant. So they paired something the baby was scared of, the noise of a hammer hitting a steel bar, with the visual stimulus of a rat. After exposing him to this multiple times, Little Albert eventually began to show signs of fear when he saw a rat. Interestingly, he also got scared when he saw things that had similar traits to the rat – a dog, cotton, and a Santa Claus mask. While the experiment was true to scientific investigation in terms of testing a hypothesis and conducting an experiment, there are two aspects where this experiment falls short.
What about the ethics of this experiment? Was it ethical to condition an infant to be afraid of an animal? Would there be long-lasting impacts of this conditioning? Unfortunately, people are unsure what became of Little Albert, with some reports stating that he passed away when he was six years old from hydrocephalus.
However, even though Little Albert never lived long enough to see if there were lasting effects, it was still a highly unethical experiment to conduct. Pavlov conditioned a dog to salivate when he heard a bell ring; he did not condition the negative emotion of fear. This feature guaranteed this experiment's notoriety.
Furthermore, due to the unethical nature of this experiment, it is unable to be replicated. So how do we know for sure that this produced evidence for his theory? Was it just a fluke? Since the current ethical guidelines would not allow for this study to be reproduced, it’s hard to tell for sure. We know that that specific baby, stimuli, and situations led to those results, but since conditioned fear will never be tested again, we should not take the results at face value.
Through this example, we can see that a scientific investigation includes more than just the scientific method.
Little Albert experiment, commons.wikimedia/Galiaoffri
There are three main types of scientific investigation – descriptive, comparative, and experimental. Looking for answers to research questions is what these three types have in common. However, there are distinct differences that set them apart from one another.
A key aspect of descriptive investigations is right there in the name – descriptions. Descriptive investigations are concerned with describing the world around us. They rely on highly detailed observations to bolster the investigation. This type of investigation does not need a hypothesis since it is simply based on observations.
An example of a descriptive investigation would be observing the stars. You can’t actually conduct a typical scientific study on stars (also known as an experimental investigation), so your investigation would rely on detailed observations. Although there is a research question driving the study, there’s no hypothesis able to be made since you can’t create independent and dependent variables with the stars.
Comparative investigations focus on collecting data from different populations and then comparing the data. Unlike the descriptive, these investigations need a hypothesis since there is something to compare. An example of a comparative investigation would be gathering data on high school seniors across different high schools. There would be no control group since the data from the two populations is just being compared, but your experiment would still have a research question, hypothesis, predictions, and the collection of evidence.
Experimental investigations are probably the investigations you first think of when someone mentions an experiment. These are the investigations that require the scientific method, variables, and a hypothesis. It requires the psychologist, scientist, or researcher to design a study that will fairly test the hypothesis. An example of an experimental investigation would be trying to determine how much attention someone thinks they’re getting if they’re wearing a T-shirt with an embarrassing image on it. The researchers would have to completely design an experiment using the scientific method, of course including a research question, hypothesis, predictions, and collect evidence.
This structured scientific investigation is the backbone of furthering our knowledge of psychology.
Without the scientific method and a regulated way of conducting experiments, there would be no accurate way of determining if experiments produce consistent results. It is these results that we base our understanding of psychology on. For example, a psychologist decides to study the impact that inconsistent sleep has on memory. Then, they decide to test this by having participants vary their amount of sleep. On the first night, the participants sleep for four hours. The next night they sleep for nine and carry on this pattern for two weeks.
How do you reliably test sleep? pixabay.com/ddimitrova
If another psychologist wants to study the same theory, but has the participants vary their sleep by only one hour a night; would this be testing the same theory as the first psychologist? What if the other psychologist kept the sleep pattern the same, but tested for six months instead of two weeks? It would still be studying the effect of inconsistent sleep on memory, but would not be studying the identical relationship as the original study.
This aspect of scientific investigation allows for a continued collection of data to bolster existing experiments.
Additionally, it ensures that the participants in the study remain physically and mentally safe not only during the study but also after. The American Psychological Association (APA), has guidelines to make certain the participants are safe and that there are no long-lasting effects from any experiments in which they participate. These guidelines were first implemented in 2003, with the latest revision in 2017.
Scientific investigation is a process by which scientists observe and test varying phenomena.
The steps in a scientific investigation are: Designing and executing an experiment using the scientific method, analyzing data, and ensuring ethical guidelines are met. The steps of the scientific method are: Make an observation and ask a question, do background research and make a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, collect data, and draw conclusions.
The main purpose of a scientific investigation is to provide structure to research through the scientific method, data analysis, and ethical guidelines.
Components that are part of all scientific investigations are, among others, recording data, analysis of data, and conclusion are part of all scientific investigations. Since descriptive investigations do not require a hypothesis, that cannot be included.
An example of scientific investigation in psychology is the (in)famous Little Albert experiment.
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