Studying and identifying social phenomena is a difficult area of psychology and requires careful planning and controls. To achieve this, there are several available methods and procedures by which a social psychologist can follow, thus attempting to identify and observe causal relationships in the social world. This essay will explain what these methods are and show what good they have to offer a social psychologist, as well as the disadvantages of these methods, and assert which approach is the most useful of these methods and why.
             There are two main groups that all these methods will fall into. These are known as experimental methods and non-experimental methods, and each group has sub-methods by which psychologists can carry out their research.
             Non-experimental methods do not involve deliberately making changes to something to then study the effects that have resulted. In other words, there is no manipulation of an independent variable. The investigator studies something that would have been altered even if no study were being conducted, observes naturally occurring behaviour and asks questions to willing participants.
             In contrast, experimental methods do involve the manipulation of an independent variable. In studies using experimental methods the investigator alters something (an independent variable) and then measures the effect the change has on something else (this is known as the dependent variable).
             All psychological approaches attempt to use certain basic criteria as a base for their research. As a scientific discipline, it is essential that psychology adopts scientific principles and methodology to carry out its research. Scientists, and therefore psychologists, should approach their work objectively, not relying on gut feelings or their own beliefs and opinions. Psychologists should make objective observations of the thing they aim to study and then form a testable, objectively observable hypothesis and a method by...