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18 Psychological questions
🏠 Self-study
Evaluating the empirical feasibility of the research questions
The table below displays the list of the psychological questions generated in Lab 1, each accompanied by a rating and a justification (click on a question to show its justification). The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate how easily each question could be investigated empirically; that is, answered through systematic data collection via methods like experiments, surveys, or observations.
The Rating column scores each question on a scale from 0 to 10:
- 10 (Very Easy): The question can be readily investigated using standard, well-established research methods.
- 1 (Very Difficult): The question could be investigated in theory but faces major practical or ethical challenges.
- 0 (Not Empirical): The question cannot be answered through scientific data collection, as it is primarily philosophical, metaphysical, or based on a non-falsifiable premise.
AI-generated content: Please note that the scores in the Rating column and the justifications were generated by an AI to provide a preliminary assessment of each question’s research feasibility.
What to do
Work through the table in your own time. The ratings are a starting point for your own thinking, not the final word, so read them critically:
- Find your own question. If you added a question in Lab 1, search for it using a keyword from it. Do you agree with its rating? If your question received a low rating, could you rephrase it so that it becomes easier to investigate (as in the research basics activity in Chapter 16)?
- Check the extremes. Click on the Rating column header to sort the questions by rating, then click it again to reverse the order. Read some of the justifications for the highest- and lowest-rated questions. What makes a question easy to investigate, and what makes it difficult or impossible?
- Explore your area of interest. Use the category buttons to show only questions from the research area you find most interesting (e.g., Clinical or Developmental). Read through some of the ratings and justifications. Do you agree with them?
When you disagree with a rating, try to say why. For example, is the question harder to investigate than the justification suggests because it involves ethical issues, hard-to-reach participants, or concepts that are difficult to operationalise? Or is it easier because there is an established method the justification overlooks? Could researchers only make an association claim, or would a causal claim be possible?