APPLYING RESEARCH METHODS
Summary of literature
WEEK 1: introduction
Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan (2010)
Most people are not WEIRD
Experimental findings from several disciplines indicate considerable variation among human
populations in diverse domains. people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and
democratic (WEIRD) societies — and particularly American undergraduates — are some of the
most psychologically unusual people on Earth. And yet it is this population that most
psychological research bases draw data and conclusions from.
96% of subjects are from Western industrialized countries, which house just 12% of the world’s
population. Conclusions are drawn based on the assumption that the sample is representative of
the (world) population in the aspect that is measured. Many long-standing theories of how
humans perceive, categorize, and remember, emphasize the centrality of analytical thought,
which really only is accurate for Americans. Besides, paradigms are set up to successfully test
behavior of people from industrialized societies, but not so much of people that are from non-
industrialized societies.
Researchers and policy-makers should recognize that populations vary considerably in the
extent to which they display certain biases, patterns and preferences.
Four suggestions:
1. Editors and reviewers should push researchers to support any generalizations with
evidence.
2. Granting agencies, reviewers and editors should give researchers credit for comparing
diverse and inconvenient subject pools.
3. Granting agencies should prioritize cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research.
4. Researchers must strive to evaluate how their findings apply to other populations.
A crucial longer-term goal is to establish a set of principles that researchers can use to
distinguish variable from universal aspects of psychology.
Shaughnessy et al. (2015)
Research methods in psychology: sampling in survey research
Researchers are not interested in responses of
selected and surveyed participants; instead, they seek
to describe the larger population from which the
sample was drawn.
A biased sample is one in which the characteristics
of the sample are systematically different from the
characteristics of the population.
Selection bias occurs when the procedures used to
select a sample result in overrepresentation or
underrepresentation of some segment(s) of the
population.
o Population: set of all cases of interest.
o Sampling frame: a specific list of the members
of the population in order to select a subset.
Operational definition of population.
o Sample: subset of the population actually
drawn from the sampling frame.
o Element: each member of the population.
1
Summary of literature
WEEK 1: introduction
Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan (2010)
Most people are not WEIRD
Experimental findings from several disciplines indicate considerable variation among human
populations in diverse domains. people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and
democratic (WEIRD) societies — and particularly American undergraduates — are some of the
most psychologically unusual people on Earth. And yet it is this population that most
psychological research bases draw data and conclusions from.
96% of subjects are from Western industrialized countries, which house just 12% of the world’s
population. Conclusions are drawn based on the assumption that the sample is representative of
the (world) population in the aspect that is measured. Many long-standing theories of how
humans perceive, categorize, and remember, emphasize the centrality of analytical thought,
which really only is accurate for Americans. Besides, paradigms are set up to successfully test
behavior of people from industrialized societies, but not so much of people that are from non-
industrialized societies.
Researchers and policy-makers should recognize that populations vary considerably in the
extent to which they display certain biases, patterns and preferences.
Four suggestions:
1. Editors and reviewers should push researchers to support any generalizations with
evidence.
2. Granting agencies, reviewers and editors should give researchers credit for comparing
diverse and inconvenient subject pools.
3. Granting agencies should prioritize cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research.
4. Researchers must strive to evaluate how their findings apply to other populations.
A crucial longer-term goal is to establish a set of principles that researchers can use to
distinguish variable from universal aspects of psychology.
Shaughnessy et al. (2015)
Research methods in psychology: sampling in survey research
Researchers are not interested in responses of
selected and surveyed participants; instead, they seek
to describe the larger population from which the
sample was drawn.
A biased sample is one in which the characteristics
of the sample are systematically different from the
characteristics of the population.
Selection bias occurs when the procedures used to
select a sample result in overrepresentation or
underrepresentation of some segment(s) of the
population.
o Population: set of all cases of interest.
o Sampling frame: a specific list of the members
of the population in order to select a subset.
Operational definition of population.
o Sample: subset of the population actually
drawn from the sampling frame.
o Element: each member of the population.
1
