Industrial Organizational Psychology is a discipline of psychology characterized as the science of human behavior which relates to human work and applies theories and principles of psychology to individuals and organizations (Landy, 2016). The industrial side of I/O Psychology mainly focuses on human resource while the Organization side focuses on the environment of work and how it can be improved. The paper will aim at comparing roles played by scientists and practitioners that industrial psychology plays, it will also look out at how researches are advanced in the field and ethics considered during the research.
Comparing Dual Roles of Scientists and Practitioner
There is a complex relationship between science and practice in Industrial Organizational psychology. The scientific-practitioner model commonly referred to as Boulder model, is the model which provides psychologists with a basis in scientific research. The model which was developed by David Shakow, had the goal of increasing scientific growth in America, through the scientific- practitioner model, urges clinicians in allowing research so as to influence their applied practices, it states that in order to be well versed with the techniques, scientists and practitioners should attend seminars in order to strengthen their information regarding psychology (Fisher, 2015). Ultimately, most psychologists focus more on research or applied practice, the model otherwise argues that being versed in knowledge of the entire field improves the specialty performance of a psychologist. Additionally, differences in perception and preferences between scientists and practitioners has always been the origin of their conflict, where scientists argue that practitioners are poorly equipped in their efforts to help different patients and they suggest that scientific information is the answer to their misguided efforts. Though the research-practice disciplines reflect some sought of different concerns, they clearly interrelate because they all pose contributions to I/O psychology. There are several roles played by Industrial Organization psychologists as well, one of the roles being developing links with the community, I/O psychologists doing empirical research and their counterparts who are practitioners, exposures of these professionals to the community brings about a positive utility as the link between them and the community gets strengthened.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Another role played by I/O psychologists is the Correspondence between problems and contributions, as stated earlier; this type of psychology normally deals with behavioral response and environmental workplace. I/O psychologists have an impact in the area as they have an impact in job related difficulties; they have solutions to the perceived work-related difficulties because sufficient research has already been conducted in the areas.
Since there are many problems associated with work places today, of which most of them are caused by poor interpersonal relationships, industrial-psychologists employ psychological principles and make research on the best methodologies to be used in solving and improve quality of life at the working places. The psychologists solve the problems by making a study of the workplace productivity, the working styles of employee and management. To make an improvement in any organization, the psychologists collaborate with leaders of organizations by helping to plan policies; they come up with a plan for the future and also organize training sessions for management and employees. Additionally, industrial psychologists help business to hire more employee, they increase the efficiency of business, and study the behavioral patterns of consumers.
Over the years, there has been continued research on Industrial-organizational psychology which has played a greater role in the advancement of the field. Research within this particular field has continued to evolve because of the emergence of subfields of psychology, pioneer researchers such as Musterberg, came up with ideas that have challenged other industrial-organizational psychologists to continue expanding their empirical research. Researchers such as Casio and Aguinis have completed extensive researches on the advances that have taken place in I/O psychology since its inception in 1963, from their research, they found out that from the major 15 areas of this psychology, fifty sub-groups have increase or reduced their popularity. Whereas some fields have changed by becoming either popular or reduced popularity, their results also show that some fields have not changed at all; the results also show some relationships between important issues in the society that people and work settings are involved.
Psychological advances from the last forty -five years suggest that this field is not going to be of most importance to the society, the society will not benefit from it in achieving different societal goals unless implementations are made to it by professional organizations, researchers and practitioners. Current research on the field has encouraged companies to employ the use of social media cites in the employment of employees, it has also led business to make use of better data in making decisions.
Ethical Considerations in Conducting Research
Ethics are very vital in research and practice when it comes to industrial psychology, there are different ethical considerations made when conducting research, one of the ethics is to ensure the participants remain confined in order to keep them safe from any harm based on the information they provided (Roberts, 2015). The participants’ safety during procedures and tests should also be looked into as a safety measure. It is essential to ensure ethical considerations are made when conducting research; this can be done by avoiding conflicting ethical responsibilities through extensive organizational research.
Statistical Methods used by I/O Psychologists
Two types of research methods are used by psychologists, and include descriptive and inferential statistics. According to descriptive statistics, large amounts of data are reduced into smaller sizes in order to bring out better understanding. Some of the components used in this type of statistics include: mean, which is the average of the data, medium, that is the middle number in the data, Variance, which is the mean of squared differences, and the standard deviation, that is the square root of the variance (Ott, 2015). Descriptive statistics provides information by suggesting the coefficient correlation and the correlation of the data. On the other hand, inferential statistics allows the drawing of conclusions by allowing psychologists to make inferences which are based on probabilities.
References
Fisher, G. G., & Sandell, K. (2015). Sampling in Industrial–Organizational Psychology Research: Now What? Industrial and Organizational Psychology , 8 (2), 232-237.
Landy, F. J., & Conte, J. M. (2016). Work in the 21st century, Binder ready version: an introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology . John Wiley & Sons.
Ott, R. L., & Longnecker, M. T. (2015). An Introduction to Statistical Methods and data analysis . Nelson Education.
Roberts, L. D. (2015). Ethical Issues in Conducting Qualitative Research in online Communities. Qualitative Research in Psychology , 12 (3), 314-325.
