Question: why did you study research methods?

Maggi Laurie answered on 14 Jun 2017:

In my opinion, research methods are the core of psychological science, and they bridge the gap between a theory and an actual answer.

Say, you ask this question. Why do students study Research Methods in Psychology? Think about the many possible answers you can get, e.g. I enjoy studying statistics, it the only option at my university, it is good pre-training for doing a PhD. All of these are true (in my case), but there are infinite possible answers, and this is the theory. But how do we get from theory (an idea) to an answer? We consider and use research methods 🙂

Do you want to know what is the most common reason for studying research methods? Well, you could design a survey and count up how many people said each answer. That would give you an idea of the most common reasons.

Do you want to know what reasons people come up with first, or what variety of reasons people study research methods? You can ask them in an interview – the first one they say is probably the most important one to them, and you can ask for other reasons to get a sense of the variety. You will get a sense of what is popular (e.g. if multiple people you interview give the same answer), but also maybe come across reasons you did not think about before.