Aliya Qureshi, Academic Content Writer at Edumarz.
The goals of psychological research are similar to those of any scientific research. The following are the goals that psychologists seek to achieve from any psychological research they conduct:
The first goal of psychological research is to DESCRIBE a behavior as accurately as possible to gain an understanding of that particular behavior.
This includes observing everything about and related to a particular behavior and noting down all of it.
This includes, What, where, when, to whom, and under what circumstances a behavior is happening.
The second goal of psychological research is to PREDICT when the observed behavior will happen again.
Prediction is also a psychologists’ attempt to find a correlation between this behavior and other types of behaviors.
The third goal of explanation tells us ‘Why a behavior is happening?’
The explanation is finding the cause/causes behind a behavior, along with finding the circumstances/situations in which the behavior occurs.
It helps in controlling behavior and in forming new theories about behaviors.
Control is the Modification of a behavior.
Control focus on ‘How a behavior can be changed from an undesirable to a desirable behavior’.
In Control, we either try to reduce a behavior(undesirable) or enhance a behavior(desirable).
The aim of conducting psychological research is to solve problems in the lives of people.
Application is the final goal of psychological enquiry and it focuses on bringing positive changes in people’s lives.
In Application, the findings of the conducted research are applied to help in modifying, controlling, or enhancing a behavior.