Forum:Structuring the Wiki

Changing the "Statistics & Mathematics" entry in the "Foundations" section
I know there may be some pressure to follow PsychINFO and the APA for the headings here, but I still think this section could be vastly improved, particularly in the areas I am familiar with, if we made some changes. This idea came about when I thought about how the entry Statistics & mathematics and its structure that one finds when one clicks on the link could be improved. Let me explain in a bit more detail:
 * 1) It seems useful to me when teaching students to try to point out the differences between the areas of study within psychology and the methods of study that are used to investigate those areas.
 * 2) Obviously, these two categories are not completely independent, so it may not be possible to list all possible areas of study as, say, a row in some factorial design, and all the methods as a column in that factorial design.
 * 3) But I still think there is merit in trying to make clear this distinction in the way the component parts of psychology are displayed and described.
 * 4) If we did do this, some interesting juxtapositions might more easily appear: a somewhat deeper and more integrated view of the discipline and approaches it takes can then more easily emerge and be played upon to aid research, teaching, and understanding by students. Leastways, when I have made some attenpts to do thsi with students, it seems to have made some things a bit more easy for them.
 * 5) Of course, The Psychology Wiki isn't primarily or just a resource for students, but I still think it would make for a a clearer view of the discipline if we tried to clean up the top-level structure, going some way along these kinds of lines.
 * 6) In the case of the Statistics & mathematics entry, much would be gained by making a clearer distinction between "areas" of study and "methods" of study, and a centralised resource for "Research Methods" (what I want to replace "Statistics & mathematics" with) can do this.
 * 7) I would like to rename Statistics & mathematics to Research Methods.
 * 8) By so doing, it becomes very easy to have a major section called Qualitative approaches (as opposed to Quantitative approaches) included and acknowleged in its own right as a major Research Method.
 * 9) Statistics could then have a link given in the same list or menu in which "Qualitative approaches" appears, because, like it or not, some qualitative research also makes use of statistical methods to recognise patterns, etc in the information its research collects.
 * 10) There would be a menu item saying "Quantitative approaches", and in it would be placed information about "Measurement" (I prefer to use the term "measurement models" for this, but current use within non-Mathematical Psychology is making this term unduly restricted, and unhelpfully too, I think. But perhaps we must deal with what we find in use here, I think.) So information about interval and ratio levels of measurement would be placed here. It would also give an opportunity to include the literally 'masses' of information from modern Mathematical Psychology about psychological measurement that are almost completely unknown by most psychologists (for example, the work of Joel Michel, and information in the spirit of Krantz, Luce, and Tversky's 3 volume work "Foundations of Measurement" - an area of applied mathematics advanced in some considerable way by Mathematical Psychologists and some Economists).
 * 11) It would also allow the point to be made that, whereas quantitative approaches have measurement and measurement models, qualitative approaches have classification and categorization and classification and categorization models. Furthermore, either approach can be mathematical or not in its flavour or style, as seems best suited to meet the needs of the research and the researchers.
 * 12) "Classical" research methods that can also be either qualitative or quantitative can be added at this level, with cross-references to appropriate approaches - I am thinking of case-studies and (other) forms of naturalistic observation here.
 * 13) Similarly "True Experiments, Quasi Experiments and Correlational Studies" can go in at this level too, since it is quite possible, though little appreciated, that one can have both quantitative and qualitative examples of these, depending upon the kind of control present in the piece of research and whether observations gathered are treated in a way to yield measures (quantitative) or categories (qualitative). Of course, it is still necessary to have a separate category for Qualitative approaches, since many researchers using these approaches eschew the kinds of statistical analyses that might be used, or else make use of qualitative approaches that do not readily or easily admit that kind of analysis at all.
 * 14) That will do for now, I think. However, you may well have now guessed that these kinds of issues were those that preoccupied me in my later years of employment, and, in fact, are actively-pursued areas of theoretical research for me still.
 * 15) Finally, I really think, if nothing else is allowed, the name change should be implemented - it would allow other areas to be accessed much more easily.

 DDS talk 17:05, 25 July 2006 (UTC)