Research Methods: Designing and Conducting Research with a Real-World Focus provides the tools required to conduct relevant, high-quality research in both the classroom and the field. Carrie A. Picardi and Kevin D. Masick—psychologists with expertise in both teaching research methods and applying methods to diverse field settings—offer a unique perspective by integrating current research articles with field-specific scenarios. They draw from research methodology tactics, strategy, and constraints from practitioners across the social sciences and in business. This text effectively bridges the gap between theory and practice by demonstrating how research is done within an organizational setting, and supplies students with relevant, applicable examples to learn from.

Key Features:

• Provides tools and tips from current practitioners across the social sciences and in business—including I/O and business professionals in corporate, education, non-profit and public sector settings—to give students a taste of real-world experience thoughout the book.


• Utilizes current research articles in business and psychology journals to supplement discussion of complex concepts and reinforce the text’s applied focus.


• Critically evaluates current research and practitioner examples to help students integrate research methodology concepts from theory to practice.


• Details concepts and offers applied examples of validity, threats to validity, and reliability using practitioner scenarios and current literature.


• Incorporates statistical terms, such as descriptive and inferential statistics, measures of variability, scales of measurement, non-parametric and parametric statistics and their relationship to research methodology.


• Contains a guide to reading, interpreting, and critiquing research articles, including an explanation of research article structure, format, and focus of each section.


• Includes a section on writing research using APA format.