Many challenges that a psychologist may change in older write a good research study
One may be to find the money to finance the research that the psychologist wants to work on.
second may be that he/she can't find human subjects. Today
participants in psychological research are animals, 90% of which are rodents. According to Neal Miller (1985), animal research has large contribution in the field of psychotherapy and behavioral medicine, particularly in the treatment of anxiety and other mental problems, in the rehabilitation of neuromuscular disorders, in the alleviation of memory deficits, in reducing the effects of stress and pain, in methods of preventing drug addiction and relapse, and ways of helping premature infants gain weight. Because APA guidelines on informed consent, confidentiality, deception and debriefing are not applicable to animal participants, a separate set of guidelines is issued to protect the rights of these animals. First, the potential benefit to humans must be weighed against the potential harm to the animals involved in research. Then, a system for housing, feeding and maintaining the physical and psychological well-being of the animals must be delineated and approved upon by a committee on animal research.
2 Gender and Ethnic and Cultural Bias
involves preconceived notion about men and women. It influences psychological research in terms of choosing the research topic, the gender of the participants, and the research design. For instance, when Psychology was at its early stage, results from studies using male participants are extended to females. It is also evident nowadays that Pop Psychology unduly magnifies gender differences, especially in terms of intelligence. The result is a vicious cycle that perpetuates stereotype about men and women. Today, psychologists attempt to reduce gender bias by reorganizing theories that are originally based on research involving only male participants, to include the female population.
Research bias is not only evident on women. In psychological research, bias in terms of ethnicity and culture is also widespread. Early psychological research did not involve the participation of some ethnic minorities. Because education is considered a form of luxury in the early 1900s, data from ethnic minorities through psychological tests constructed primarily by western psychologists are clumped together as Data Noise. Furthermore, consumers of psychological information tend to adopt Ethnic Gloss, viewing ethnicity as more homogeneous than it really is. Psychologists strive to use ethnic gloss by becoming more specific in their description of the research participants - including important information on their social background, residence, use of language and birth location. Psychologists also warn their readers of the limited generalizability of their results and recommend future studies involving participants of other ethnicity. Just like addressing gender bias, psychologists are increasingly revising theories made from research on western participants to include recent findings from cross-cultural research.
Avoid generalizing from a small sample. Most psychological studies are conducted using university students as participants, usually at a number ranging from 20-100. A small sample cannot represent the psychology of the national population, especially of the entire human race.
Those are only some of the design challenges. In the implementation part of a study, often those who design the study are not those who implement the study. Many times great studies can't be carried out in different settings because they don't generalize well. Group of implementation are created to help psychologist, researchers, therapist and psychiatrist but this process is very long and costly.