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Research Methods in Psychology
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Research Methods in Psychology

Sixth Edition
Edited by:
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November 2026 | 608 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

This textbook throws open the doors to psychological research, revealing how ideas become evidence, and how you do that for yourself.

Grounded in real-world practice, it places ethical responsibility at the heart of psychological research—challenging you to think carefully about your obligations to research participants and to those who depend on research findings.

Each chapter is written by a recognised expert in the methods it explores, ensuring authoritative and practice-informed coverage throughout and clearly organised into preparation, collection and analysis sections.

Contributors include Virginia Braun, Victoria Clarke, Andy Field, and Michiel Spape.

The book is designed to actively support learning, with features that help you consolidate key concepts, sharpen your analytical thinking, and develop strong evaluation skills.

You’ll find learning objectives, exercises, discussion questions, and illustrations of key studies.

For this edition, the book was restructured to make the research process easier to follow, new chapters added to make sure the most common methods all had equal coverage, and that they all were focused on getting across the core knowledge, as easily as possible.

Clear, current, and compelling, this is an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand—and apply—research methods in psychology.


 
PART 1 Research Strategy and Design
Julie Barnett and Daniel B. Wright
Chapter 1 Research Ethics
Glynis M. Breakwell
Chapter 2 Theory and Method
Glynis M. Breakwell
Chapter 3 Designing Research
Daniel B. Wright
Chapter 4 Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches
 
PART 2 Collecting Data
Daniel B. Wright
Chapter 5 Sampling
David J. Hand
Chapter 6 Measurement
Glynis M. Breakwell
Chapter 7 Observation
Glynis M. Breakwell
Chapter 8 Interviewing
Lauri Hyers and Dangeni Dangeni
Chapter 9 Diaries
Korina Sotirakopoulou
Chapter 10 Focus Group
Xenia Chryssochoou, Melina Niraki and Ioannis Ntotsikas
Chapter 11 Ethnography and Action Research
Chris Fife-Schaw
Chapter 12 Questionnaire Design
R. Michael Furr
Chapter 13 Psychometric Methods
Michiel M. Spapé
Chapter 14 Psychophysiological Methods
Ting Yan
Chapter 15 Survey Methods
Rita Guerra and Sven Waldzus
Chapter 16 Experiments
Chris Fife-Schaw
Chapter 17 Quasi-experiments
Alice Ramos, Cláudia Lopes, and Luísa Lima
Chapter 18 Using Secondary Data and Big Data
 
PART 3 Analyzing Data
Glynis M. Breakwell and Julie Barnett
Chapter 19 Content Analysis
Virginia Braun, Victoria Clarke, Nikki Hayfield and Gareth Terry
Chapter 20 Reflexive Thematic Analysis
Rusi Jaspal
Chapter 21 Discourse Analysis
Marianna E. Carlucci, Jack K. Connors and Emalee Quickel
Chapter 22 Descriptive Statistics
Marianna E. Carlucci, Jack K. Connors, and Emalee J. W. Quickel
Chapter 23 Intervals and Null Hypotheses
Jeremy Miles and Mark Shevlin
Chapter 24 Correlation
Mark Shevlin and Jeremy Miles
Chapter 25 Regression
Katherine McGuire and Kamala London
Chapter 26 Factorial ANOVA
Sarah M. Wolff and Danielle L. Head
Chapter 27 Scale Development
Gemma Cherry and Angela Boland
Chapter 28 Systematic Reviews
Andy P. Field and Martina Sladekova
Chapter 29 Meta-analysis
Daniel B. Wright
Chapter 30 Relationship of Data Collection and Data Analysis
 
PART 4 Evaluation and Further Developments
Glynis M. Breakwell
Chapter 31 Evaluating Research of Others
Glynis M. Breakwell, Joshua Carter, Roi Cohen Kadosh, and Daniel B. Wright
Chapter 32 Developing Research Methods