Research Basics
A type of research design that manipulates variables to establish cause and effect.
What is experimental research?
This principle ensures that participants voluntarily agree to be part of a study after being fully briefed on the study.
What is informed consent?
All statistical tests are designed to test this.
What is the null hypothesis (hypothesis of no difference).
Therapists rely on this to select interventions that have been shown to work in similar client populations.
What is Evidence-Based-Practice (EBP)?
Research helps community mental health programs secure this type of financial support.
What is funding or grants?
This type of validity is concerned with the generalizability of findings.
What is external validity?
Before conducting a study involving human subjects, researchers must get approval from this body.
What is the Institutional Review Board (IRB).
Describe a way to narrow a search on an academic database.
Parentheses "substance use" vs. substance use
Therapists might consult this section of a research article to evaluate whether the study’s findings are applicable to their clients.
What is Discussion or Limitations sections?
Community agencies often use this type of research to evaluate the effectiveness of their programming.
What is program evaluation?
Describe 2 sampling procedures used in research.
Random: each individual has the same chance of being selected as each other.
Convenience: participants are selected based on availability.
Systematic: similar to random, but an individual is selected for every population.
Stratified: population is divided into layers, then within each group a random sample is selected
Cluster: several different “clusters” are formed then random sampling is used to gain samples.
Describe the practice of reflexivity.
What is the process of being aware of and acknowledging the researcher's contribution to the construction of meanings throughout the research process and the impossibility of remaining outside of one's research?
If a study has a large sample size but poor measurement tools, it likely suffers from a lack of this.
What is internal validity?
Explain the key differences between a clinical interview and a research interview.
Clinical Interview:
Designed to assess, diagnose, and plan treatment for a client.
Goal: understand the client’s problems and needs within a therapeutic context.
Research Interview:
Designed to collect data to answer a research question.
Goal: produce knowledge or gain understanding.
This type of research involves working directly with community members to address local mental health needs.
What is Community-Based-Participatory-Research (CBPR)?
Explain the methodological differences between Quantitative and Qualitative research methods.
QUANTITATIVE research methods investigate a defined problem or a question formulated as a hypothesis, data are gathered and analyzed to test the hypothesis, and results are related back to the original problem or question.
QUALITATIVE research methods use a guiding question rather than a hypothesis and data collection and data analysis are used in a formative way concerned with learning about meaning
A controversial study that led to reforms in ethical research guidelines.
What is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?
This practice strengthens the credibility of qualitative research by having multiple researchers independently analyze the data and compare results.
What is triangulation or inter-rater/coder reliability?
A therapist who reads a study and decides not to use its recommendations because the client’s values and preferences don’t align is demonstrating this important element of EBP.
What is client-centered care, or clinical judgement.
Describe the methodological process of community-based/participatory-action research.
CBPR: a collaborative approach to research that equitably involves community members, researchers, and other stakeholders in the research process.
- Establish partnership, define question, design & execute, move to action.
Name and define 2 ontological perspectives.
Post-Positivism: deterministic, reductive; certain causes determine specific outcomes. Experimental research where theories are tested.
Constructivism: people create knowledge rather than passively acquire it; research participants construct their own meaning
Transformative: research must be rooted within socio-political-context to address oppression of marginalized individuals; oriented toward social justice
Pragmatism: concerned with real-world applications of solutions
The result of the Belmont Report (1979) established which guiding principals of research ethics.
What is: Respect for Persons, Beneficence, Justice.
Name and define 2 criteria for judging qualitative and 2 criteria for judging quantitative research.
Quantitative: Internal validity, External Validity, Reliability, Objectivity.
Qualitative: Credibility, Transferability, Dependability, Confirmability.
Staying informed about research helps clinicians recognize when an intervention lacks support or could be harmful, enhancing this ethical responsibility
What is doing no harm (nonmaleficence)?
Community mental health researchers must often navigate this type of ethical complexity when working with vulnerable populations.
What is informed consent with diminished capacity or power imbalances?