Casting Nets And Testing Specimens: Two Grand Methods Of Psychology

Written for researcher and methodologists in the fields of psychology, education, and the behavioral sciences, this volume looks at the two major types of methods--the method of relative frequency and the method of specimens--and argues that although both can deliver useful information about human behavior, most social scientists have been using the method of relative frequency for the wrong purpose--to discover how the human as a species, functions. The method of relative frequency can be used effectively, Runkel asserts, only to estimate behavioral trends in a mass population. To learn how the internal workings of a species enable it to do what it does, the method of specimens must be employed.