ABSTRACT
This chapter considers changes that have taken place in social psychological research design. It looks at a study that examined research in social psychology since 1968. Some researchers were strongly in favor of role playing as an alternative to deception while others were equally strongly against it. A few researchers have found that the results obtained from role-playing subjects are similar to those obtained from deceived subjects. Social psychologists have viewed simulation as a research tool. A. Nowak and colleagues believed that as a research tool, computer simulations can provide social psychologists with a bridge between individual behavior and group behavior. S. G. West and colleagues divided research designs into six types: Meta and secondary analysis, cross-sectional, longitudinal, experimental-personality, quasi-experiments, and true experiments. A review of research methods between 1968 and 1988 indicated little change in the design of studies reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
