After the domination of behaviourism in Anglo-American psychology during the middle of the century, the impression has been left, reflected in the many texts on research design, that the experimental method is the central tool of psychological research. In fact, a glance through journals will illuminate a wide array of datagathering instruments in use outside the experimental laboratory and beyond the field experiment. This book takes the reader through details of the experimental method, but also examines the many criticisms of it, in particular the argument that its use, as a paradigm, has led to some fairly arid and unrealistic psychological models, as has the empirical insistence on.
