(Photo Credit: Dani Ihtatho) This preliminary stage of the psychology project process assumes that you have a general research idea in mind. Whether you consider this idea to be somewhat vague or well developed (the former being the most likely) you must establish and maintain a clearly defined focus throughout your investigation.
Unless you intend to conduct exploratory or emergent psychology research - where theoretically/philosophically you do not envisage issues and questions arising until the investigation is underway - it is extremely important that you establish your focus at the beginning of the research process.
I can't emphasize this point enough because not only will it make the whole research process much more manageable but it will also make it more likely that you receive a very good grade when your psychology project is assessed.
The main reason for this is that it will provide the foundation for what is known as the golden thread i.e., the major concept within your research that influences every stage of the research process; and as such, can be seen developing within each section of your psychology project write-up.
To give you some idea of the thought processes involved in establishing a focus, the following example relates to a Masters thesis I supervised a couple of years ago. The student I was supervising wanted to look at whether any of the techniques used in criminal profiling could be adopted or adapted to investigate financial fraud. In order to develop a focus within this general area of interest, between us we explored the following questions and issues:
· The profiling techniques the student was particularly interested in. · Eliciting the profiling perspectives that these techniques reside within e.g. classic psychodynamic FBI type profiling and the more ‘scientific’ approaches e.g. statistical modelling.
· Could a theoretical link be established between profiling and employee/financial fraud, the most obvious link might be that it may tell us something about the personality of the offender.
· Approaching the research from the employers’ perspective, as contacting individuals who have committed fraud would be fraught with a host of practical and ethical difficulties.
· Leaving profiling aside, what about researching occupational crime prevention strategies in general? For instance, the use of cognitive interviews to detect false insurance claims. What prevention strategies do banks employ? Are these effective?