The Main Methods in Psychosocial Research

Psychosocial research marked a break with the traditions that had dominated scientific thought in psychology and other especially social disciplines. Among other things, it has made it possible to generate orderly and systematic ways of doing scientific knowledge and understanding reality (that is, research methods), avoiding the classic separation between individual and society.

Next we will do a general review of the traditions that have marked psychology as a scientific discipline and we will describe the concepts of methodology and method, to finally present the main characteristics of psychosocial research close to the critical orientations of contemporary thought.

Main traditions of research in psychology

Being a scientific discipline, psychology has been part of the traditions and transformations that have historically marked the terrain of science. The paradigm that has traditionally dominated this field has been the positivist one which is based on the idea that there is a reality that can be revealed from a specific methodology and method: the hypothetical-deductive, which offers us to explain, predict and manipulate the functioning of that reality.

However (and given that this paradigm is also established through the separation between nature and culture), when trying to explain social phenomena, which did not seem to follow the same patterns as natural phenomena, the hypothetico-deductive method faced with some challenges. Many of them were resolved through the calculation of probabilities, that is, by predicting future behaviors, taking care that external factors did not intervene in the process, or in other words, evaluating these probabilities in an objective, neutral and impartial manner.

Some time later, this paradigm faced new challenges, when through relativistic theory, chaos theory and feminist epistemologies, among other theories of knowledge, it became evident that the researcher’s position is not neutral, but rather it is a position located in a body, an experience, a history and a specific context; which also inevitably affects the reality you are studying.

From there, very diverse research methods have emerged that allow the field of experience to be taken into account as a key element; in addition to being valid and legitimate, in the construction of knowledge.

Methodology or Method? Examples and differences

The concepts of methodology and method are widely used in research and are also frequently confused or used as synonyms. Although there is no single or definitive way to explain them, and they do not necessarily have to be separated, below we offer a proposed definition of both methodology and method, as well as some differences in the models.

Methodology: place the tools somewhere

By the term “methodology” we generally refer to the theoretical perspective in which the procedure or system that we will follow during an investigation is framed. For example, contemporary and Western science traditions are often divided into two broad frameworks: qualitative methodology and quantitative methodology.

The quantitative methodology is the one that has been especially valued in the scientific field and is based on the hypothetical-deductive method that seeks to establish probabilities and predictions by appealing to the impartiality of the researcher.

On the other hand, Qualitative methodology has gained ground in the area of ​​social sciences and in critical orientations because it allows us to develop understandings about a reality by recovering the experience of those who are involved in that reality, including the person doing the research. From this, the concept of responsibility and ethics in research has taken on fundamental importance.

Furthermore, starting from there, a methodological-inductive model was configured, which does not seek to explain a reality but to understand it; which implies that an action or phenomenon is not only described, but when described it is interpreted. Furthermore, they are interpreted by a person or a group of people located in a specific context, thus It is understood that this interpretation is not free of judgments; It is an interpretation developed in correspondence with the characteristics of that context.

Both quantitative methodology and qualitative methodology have criteria of scientific rigor that make their proposals valid in the field of science and can be shared between different people.

Method: the tool and the instructions

On the other hand, a “method” is an orderly and systematic way that we use to produce something; so in the field of research, the “method” usually makes a more specific reference to the research technique that is used and the way in which it is used.

The method then is what we use to collect information that we are going to analyze and that will then allow us to offer a set of results, reflections, conclusions, proposals, etc. An example of a method could be interviews or experiments that are used to collect and group a set of data, such as statistical figures, texts, or public documents.

Both the methodology and the research method are defined based on the questions that we want to answer with our research, that is, according to the problems that we have posed.

An approach to psychosocial research

As we have seen, scientific knowledge has traditionally been produced from an important dissociation between the psychic and the social, which has given rise to the now classic debates between nature-culture individual-society, innate-learned, etc.

In fact, if we go a little further, we can see that it is also based on the Cartesian binomial mind-body, which has translated into the divisions between subject-object and subjectivity-objectivity; where it is objectivity that is frequently overvalued in the scientific field: reason over experience, a reason that, as we have said before, is presented as neutral, but which is established among a multiplicity of norms, practices and relationships.

So the term psychosocial refers to the connection between psychic elements and social factors that shape identities, subjectivities, relationships, norms of interaction, etc. It is a theoretical perspective and a methodological position that attempts to undo the false divisions between the social and the psychic.

The critical perspective in psychosocial research

In some contexts, the psychosocial perspective has come very close to critical theories of science (those that pay special attention to the effects of science on the reproduction of social inequalities).

That is, a psychosocial perspective that is also critical would not only seek to understand or interpret a reality, but locate the relations of power and domination that configure that reality to generate crises and transformations.

Incorporate a critical perspective that has to do with reflecting to promote emancipatory action; make alliances by detecting the power relations that hold and at the same time open certain possibilities of action; make an explicit criticism of domain relations assuming that the act of research affects and impacts the specific terrain that is being studied.

Examples of methods in psychosocial research

Methods in psychosocial research have been categorized with different names for ease of use, rigor and reliability. However, when taking into consideration how the person who investigates affects the reality he or she investigates; and that the methods are not neutral either, they can share some of the parameters with each other. That is, they are flexible methods.

In this sense, any orderly and systematic way of collecting information to understand a phenomenon with the purpose of blurring the boundaries between the psychic and the social, could be a method of psychosocial research.

Some examples of the methods that have been especially relevant because they have allowed the previously described to be put into play are discourse analysis, mobile drifts in research, biographical methods such as life stories autoethnography, ethnography, and the now classic in-depth interviews.

There are also some methods that are more participatory such as participatory action research and narrative techniques, where the main aim is for knowledge to be co-constructed between the researcher and those who participate, thus generating a horizontal relationship during the research process and with Therefore, question the barrier between two practices that have been understood as separate: research and intervention.

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