Basic Scientific Literacy for the DID Community
So, I mentioned I was going to do this a couple months ago. Technically this is applicable to everyone, but I will be focusing on research methods relevant to psychology as opposed to all forms of research.
Understand that science never operates in the negative or in absolutes. You are never going to find something that says "x thing doesn't happen" because science cannot prove a negative. Science also doesn't like to deal in absolutes--because it leaves room for error. Even findings about things like gravity will use "likely" or probabilities instead of saying "this is the only thing that will ever happen always." This does not mean that gravity might possibly not exist, or that anything can occur simply because science didn't explicitly say no.
When was it published? Research published 10+ years ago is considered outdated. This doesn't mean it's worthless, but it means it should be compared to current research for discrepancies.
Who is the researcher? What is their focus? Why are they researching this? A neurologist is not going to look for the same things as a counseling psychologist.
Who's funding it? Is there any reason why the funder would cause potential bias in the research?
What kind of study is it? A longitudinal study measures things over time, which is useful for tracking things like recovery. A case study is good for uncommon or extreme presentations, but cannot be said to occur for more than the person(s) involved. Metastudies are great for summarizing information and finding trends among multiple studies. A survey is easy and at times the only way how to do things, but very prone to fault because people lie, exaggerate, etc. A study that makes connections between things (for example, an adult reporting having experienced x thing during childhood) is only is associating certain things together--but does not imply cause/effect. This is a big one for DID research because researchers can't ethically put people through traumatic situations in a lab and see what causes what thing to occur. Meaning a lot of studies are associating things together but don't actually mean there's a causal relationship. There are a lot of other factors that could be influencing things.
Understand the research method. For example, were the researchers aware of which participants were receiving which thing? Were the participants aware? A study where someone is told they are going to hear a loud noise before it happens is going to have different results from one where someone is completely unaware.
How many people are being studied? What are their demographics? A study of 20 people who are all white, upper middle class college students from New York is not going to have findings that accurately represent the world. If that study says "70% of participants reported having gone skiing in the past month" it is not able to be generalized to all college students, much less the entire population. You can't say that 70% of all people have gone skiing recently. A representative sample size is going to be diverse in demographics and ideally have a high number of participants.
Understand participant bias. Who is likely to participate in research? Where did the researchers get the participants from? Were the questions given by the researchers more likely to result in exaggeration/lying (eg, noone likes to feel weird, if a question is framed as if having x experience is abnormal, less people are going to say they have experienced it)? Were the questions misleading or confusing? Example would be if someone was doing research on all immigrants, but only advertised their study at a community center specifically for Asian Americans, they're probably not going to get anyone who ISN'T Asian American and so their results will be skewed. They probably are also disproportionately going to get impoverished/lower class participants as it's a community center.
Has the study been replicated? One study showing that x happens is nice, but until other studies conducted by an entirely different research team get the same/similar result, it is not anything more than a neat paper. A bunch of studies all saying the same thing, done by many different people, is when you start seeing trends.
Understand the data. Does the data skew in a certain direction? Are there one or two really extreme results? For example, the average household income is much higher than the median household income because the average includes millionaires and billionaires. That doesn't mean the average household income is actually COMMON to have.
Understand the conclusion. If a researcher says there may be a connection between two things, they do not mean that the first thing causes the second. Do not draw more from the study than what it actually says in black and white.
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