Designs, participants, and measurement methods in psychological research

Critical reviews of psychological scholarship suggest that self-report questionnaires, experimental designs, and college students dominate psychological research. Although researchers within specific subfields of psychology have the requisite knowledge to assess the generality of these concerns, novices of psychological research do not. To provide such knowledge, we surveyed a random sample of 200 journal articles in the PsycINFO database coding for psychological content area, research design, measurement method, and participant type. Results indicate self-report questionnaires, experimental designs, and college students each appeared in a minority of studies and these study characteristics often varied significantly by content area. Results also suggest no single dominant "typical" study in psychological research but rather that the characteristics of such research exhibit remarkable diversity.