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hesitate to talk in front of your parents and areas as intelligence, personality, interest, teachers but not when you are with friends. values, creativity, emotions, motivation, You may have also noticed that not all people psychological disorders, illusions, behaveinexactlythesamemannerinthesame delusions, hallucinations, perceptual situation.Themethodofdatacollection(survey, judgment, thought processes, interview, experiment, etc.) used and the consciousness, subjective experiences, etc. characteristics of respondents (such as, individual or group, young or old, male or The above information could be from the female, rural or urban, etc.) also influence the point of view of measurementsomewhatcrude. Like, in the form of categories (such as high/ nature and quality of data. It is possible that low,yes/no),rankswhichprovideordinaldata, when you interview a student, s/he may report behaving in a particular manner in a given viz. first, second, third, fourth, etc., or scores situation. But when you go for actual (10, 12, 15, 18, 20, etc.) on scales. We also observation you may find just the opposite of obtain verbal reports, observation records, what s/he had reported. Another important personal diaries, field notes, archival data, etc. Such types of information is analysed feature of data is that it does not in itself speak about reality. Inferences have to be made from separately using qualitative methods. You will data.Aresearcherattachesmeaningtothedata get some idea about this later in this chapter. by placing it in its proper context. In psychology, different types of data or SOME IMPORTANT M ETHODS IN P SYCHOLOGY information are collected. Some of these types are : In the previous section you read about wide i) DemographicInformation: Thisinformation variety of data that we collect in psychological generallyincludespersonalinformationlike studies. All these varieties of data cannot be name, age, gender, birth order, number of collected through a single method of enquiry. siblings, education, occupation, marital Psychologists use a variety of methods like status, number of children, locality of Observation, Experimental, Correlational, residence, caste, religion, parental Survey, Psychological Testing, and Case Study education, occupation, and family income, to collect data. The aim of this section is to etc. guide you to select the methods which may be ii) Physical Information : This category appropriatefordifferentresearchpurposes.For includes information about ecological example: conditions (hilly/desert/forest), mode of • Youcanobservethebehaviourofspectators economy,housingconditions,sizeofrooms, watching a football match. facilities available at home, in the neighbourhood, in the school, mode of • You can conduct an experiment to see if transportation, etc. children taking an examination do better in the classroom in which they had studied iii) Physiological Data : In some studies the subject or in the examination hall physical, physiological and psychological (cause-effect relationship). data are collected about height, weight, heart rate, level of fatigue, Galvanic Skin • Youcancorrelateintelligencewith,say,self- Resistance (GSR), electrical activity of the esteem (for prediction purposes). brainmeasuredbyElectro-encephalograph • You can survey students’ attitude towards privatisation of education. (EEG), blood oxygen levels, reaction time, • You can use psychological tests to find out duration of sleep, blood pressure, pattern ofdream,amountofsalivation,runningand individual differences. jumping rates (in case of animal studies), • You can conduct a case study on the etc., are collected. development of language in a child. The main characteristics of these methods iv) Psychological Information : Psychological information collected, may relate to such are described in the following sections. 24 Psychology Reprint 2026-27