Psychology in India, Volume 4

5

Quantitative Methods in Psychology

Damodar Suar and Biranchi N. Puhan

INTRODUCTION

Quantitative methods (QMs), in one form or other, have surfaced in earlier surveys of psychology in India. A chapter in the first survey covers the area of test construction and factor analysis till 1970 (Mitra, 1972). The first chapter of the second survey provides a wider exposition to psychological theory and research methods till 1976 (Mukherjee, 1980). It examines the major drawbacks in research and pleads for the indigenous conceptualization and theorization. It also argues in favour of the use of mathematical models and appropriate sampling methods, scaling techniques, psychological assessment, psychophysics, and the application of multivariate statistics. ...