The Ethics And Public Policies - 1233 Words

When studying personality psychology, a researcher uses theories, methods, and relies heavily on ethics, reliability, and validity. Using the â€Å"LOTS of data† acronym, personality researchers gather information to study people. These include, L-data (life record data), O-data (observation data), T-data (Test data) and S-data (self-report data). (Cervone Pervin, 2013) Each method has strengths and weaknesses. As well as â€Å"LOTS†, researchers must form a theory to â€Å"decide what to measure and how to measure it (Cervone Pervin, 2013, p. 42).† Theory without research can be speculation and research without theory is gathering meaningless information. Once a theory is made, one can start to gather a lot of data. However, before gathering the†¦show more content†¦By gathering research from observers, such as teachers, parents, and peers, a researcher might find information the individual may not be conscious of when self-reporting. This information is usually gathered by using questionnaires or other forms of rating the individual’s personality. (Cervone Pervin, 2013) T-data, information gathered from experimental procedures, are useful when looking at large studies. Newer technology and large numbers are beneficial to this method. T-data is objective, meaning it measures the goal of â€Å"his/her performance on a task (Cervone Pervin, 2013, p.37).† Finally, S-data, is information gathered when an individual is self-reporting about themselves. Questionnaires are the most common form of S-data. The individual will observe their own personality and report it to the researcher, but S-data has its limitations. Because the individual is self-reporting, they may not be aware of some personal characteristics and fail to report them accurately. Even with this limitation, Self-reports are still widely used more and more today with the advancement of technology and large numbers of diverse samples contributing to resear ch studies. (Cervone Parvin, 2013) Theory, â€Å"consisting of a systematic body of ideas about a particular topic or phenomenon (Cozby Bates, 2012),† is arguably the most important part of research studies. The theory guides which assessment will be used to study which aspect of personality. The information