Casting Nets and Testing Specimens: Two Grand Methods of Psychology

Abstract

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.

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