Industrial organizational psychology is the scientific study of human behavior in the workplace. Its purpose is to assess the dynamic of the individual, group, or the entire organization and use the outcomes to solve the problems that will help to improve the well-being of the employees and the performance of the organization (Rogelberg, 2002). The psychologist of the industrial organization focuses on the questions like how to make decisions in the organization. How effective is communication? How can the organization ensure collaborative and interactive team members? Having the answers to the questions helps the owners of the business to identify where to change in the system so that the company can function more efficiently. This paper focuses on the two research methods: quantitative and qualitative research methods in industrial organization.
The quantitative research method is the approach that involves collecting and analyzing numerical data. The method plays a significant role in answering the questions concerning the meaning of various psychological concepts, determining their levels of variability and in identifying the relationships that exist in the concepts (Bryman, 2003). The data from the quantitative approach can yield measurement operations for instance categorization, counts or even complex operation that may demand scales of measurements that can work as psychological yardsticks. Quantitative research methods have enabled industrial organization psychologists in developing self-report measures of a construct known as the job satisfaction (JS) which puts into consideration the satisfaction of an individual considering the payment, supervisor, or working setting. It also helps in answering questions regarding quantity.
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Industrial organization psychologists depend mostly on a wide variety of quantitative methods to achieve the objectives. One of the methods is conducting an accurate measurement of the psychological variables of interest that include the performance, work attitude, personality and even intellectual capacity that revolves around the workplace. The second method consists of a search for relationships basing it on theories. Search for relationships ensures that there is proper testing of the theories basing on the existing hypotheses where the results show if there are any relationships existing between the variables. Measurements in psychology involve developing rules and laws that help in classifying objects into their meaningful categories as well as identifying the where the objects fall on a numerical scale.
Reliability and validity are two characteristics of measurements that a quantitative method puts into account. Reliability, in this case, is the ability of the measurement to yield the same results when it is repeatedly used. There are statistical techniques that help in estimating reliability. Procedures that are theory based for instance test-retest, correlation, and coefficient alpha among the newly developed for example theory of generalization. Validity, on the other hand, addresses the issue whether the measure captures what should capture in the psychological construct.
The techniques the industrial organization psychologists’ use dates back to late 1800 and there are still developments to date. The design of the research and the analysis of the quantitative data depend on their development. The techniques depend mostly on the least-square estimation procedures that have fixed model assumptions. The method of experiment is powerful in this case because it enables one to carry out the causal inference. In the experiments studies, the research deliberately manipulates the conditions under the random assignment and then compares the outcome. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) model is one of the statistical approaches for the experimental data analysis. The analysis involves comparing the mean levels of the dependent variables while comparing with that of the manipulated experimental groups (Shadish, 2002). There are several types of ANOVA models, which capture mixed and random effects, therefore, allowing for the analysis of incomplete design matrices and control of covariates.
Qualitative research is another method that is gaining prominence in the field of psychology and organizational behavior. Lack of this kind of research studies or knowledge is a great loss to industrial-organizational psychology. Qualitative research is that type of research where its findings are not numerical and therefore does not entail any statistical procedures or any other means of quantification (Bryman, 2003). The examples of a quantitative method are ethnography, case studies narrative analysis and other types that focus on content analysis. The quantitative research method is also inductive in nature and therefore emphasizes in the building and elaborating instead of testing the theories (Bitektine, 2008). The main purpose of the inductive research helps in understanding the perceptions of the people that can help in translating the understanding to the field of academia.
Globalization, technological advancement, and the changes that occur in the demography influences the way people work relate, and organize themselves in the working places. Using such trends, the industrial organization psychologists help in investigating how and why the trends influence the theories that exist about the organizations and the relationships that permeate them for instance teamwork or conflict management (Mertens, 2014). Inductive qualitative research is there to help people to understand changes that influence on how an organization works by elaborating on the theories or developing new ones.
The impact of the qualitative research is in two ways: to help understand the views of people and the ability to translate the outcome of the study to the people in the organization in a more effective way. The interest in the qualitative research is increasing in the industrial organization psychology which helps in developing models that explains why things happen the way they do (Shah, 2006). The ability of the quantitative researchers to present actions, changing behaviors among other things helps them to identify how members in the organization understand the situations; therefore, helping them to know which event causes which consequence and the influence they have on the behavior and events.
In conclusion, qualitative and quantitative are the research methods that are very helpful in industrial-organizational psychology. When quantitative is focusing on the numerical data, the qualitative on the other hand is concentrating non-numerical data. The combination of the two methods in the research enables a well-covered study and reliable results because all the data from the study are well represented using the two methods.
References
Bitektine, A. (2008). Prospective case study design qualitative method for deductive theory testing. Organizational Research Methods, (11) , 160-180.
Bryman, A. (2003). Research methods and organization studies. New York: Routledge.
Mertens, D. M. (2014). Research and evaluation in education and psychology: Integrating diversity with quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. New York: Sage publications.
Rogelberg, S. G. (2002). Handbook of research methods in industrial and organizational psychology. Malden: Blackwell.
Shadish, W. R. (2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Shah, S. K. (2006). Building better theory by bridging the quantitative–qualitative divide. J ournal of management studies, 43(8) , 1821-1835.
