The push for more equitable research is changing the field

[This article is part of the 2023 Trends Report]

Psychologists are challenging traditional thinking about research—reevaluating how research terms are defined, how research is conducted, who is doing it, and what kinds of research are rewarded.

This includes making sure one’s research questions consider historically marginalized groups and the entire human experience, along with keeping in mind who is conducting the research and how that impacts study bias.

Psychology journals are also undergoing incremental changes. Specifically, more and more publications are noticing the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion in their scientific content and are taking steps to remedy decades of deeply racist and prejudiced practices that leave out key voices.

The field is also reevaluating how it views qualitative research—long considered to be less rigorous or robust than quantitative research. Historically, quantitative research with its measurable and empirical data has been thought of as more vital to the field than qualitative research. Yet this methodological approach can in fact be myopic and harm marginalized populations.

“I truly believe that qualitative data can provide insight that quantitative simply cannot,” said Lucy Arellano, PhD, an educational psychologist at Texas Tech University. Arellano has written papers about qualitative research and pointed to the fact that quantitative research tends to maintain the status quo, thwart critiquing, and further underscore misconceptions of deficits in marginalized populations (Education Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2022)opens in new window.

“In order to make transformational change, people need to hear the story. They need to connect on a human-emotion type of level that can only be conveyed via qualitative data,” Arellano said.

With regard to all these changes, there are still many challenging conversations to be had, but “when it comes to how we think about psychology research, we’re moving in the right direction,” said Mitch Prinstein, PhD, chief science officer at APA. “We’re starting to make some efforts to diversify our science and think differently about the way to conduct science.”

Psychology has a long history of being led primarily by White men and including mainly White study participants. A 2010 analysis of articles published in six of the field’s leading journals showed that 95% of all samples came from what the authors called Weird societies—Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (Henrich, J., et al., Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 33, No. 2–3, 2010opens in new window).

This trend has continued throughout the years. An analysis of 26,000 empirical articles on cognitive, developmental, and social psychology published from 1974 to 2018 found that questions of race tend to be largely forgotten and most journal publishers are White. Additionally, the studies that do take race into consideration are usually written by White scientists and employ few participants of color (Roberts, S. O., et al., Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 15, No. 6, 2020opens in new window).

However, psychologists are starting to embrace the need for change when it comes to how research is planned and conducted, according to Mia Smith-Bynum, PhD, senior director for science equity, diversity, and inclusion at APA. Specifically, psychologists with privileged identities are starting to have more uncomfortable yet necessary conversations about how they can help change these harmful research practices that leave out a diverse range of people.

“I’ve mentored two White men, and they were very forthright on wanting to be better and having honest and thoughtful conversations about race,” Smith-Bynum said. “This gives me hope. I didn’t really see this happening in the first 10 or so years of my career. People are now looking for content, skills, and guidance on how to do better.”

Rebecca Gaines, a PhD candidate in counseling psychology at the University of Denver, has also observed that more psychologists who are entering the field are talking about the need for intersectionality and inclusivity in their research. They are asking harder questions at the beginning of their research projects, Gaines said, including: What groups of people have been historically left out of this type of research? What can we do early on to make sure they are included so that this research is more generalizable and can benefit a larger group of people?

Like psychologists and their study participants, the realm of publishing of psychology journals has also long been a homogenous and close-minded process.

To help remedy this, APA’s publishing program is implementing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives. This framework, which was developed in 2018, advocates for equitable content that is representative of all people and communities; inclusive science that addresses inequities in psychology research; a diverse community of authors, editors, and readers; and an inclusive publishing industry that promotes a more equitable experience for underrepresented scientists.

The Asian American Journal of Psychology is one of the publications taking charge in this regard. “Research on Asian American populations is so overlooked in many other areas of psychology,” said June Kim, PhD, who edits the journal. “At AAJP, researchers don’t have to justify why it’s important to study the psychological processes of a specific racial or minoritized group. We take it as a matter of course that research about Asian Americans is important.”

This work, however, doesn’t mean publishing studies that simply compare people of color with White people. “We don’t expect researchers to treat the psychological processes of Asian Americans in contrast to other groups,” said Kim. “That is, expecting a comparison of Asian Americans versus White Americans, or something like that, where the psychological processes of Asian Americans exist in contrast to psychological processes of other groups.”

Instead, Kim and her colleagues have dedicated specific issues to focus readers’ attention on Asian American science. “Special issues have been a way to spotlight specific subfields within Asian American psychology to provide additional focus and attention to that specific subfield,” she said. These include the issues “The Growth of Filipino/x/a American Psychology” and “Promoting Health and Well-Being in Forcibly Displaced Asian Populations.”

Additionally, in an effort to track diversity in science publications, more than 50 publishers representing 15,000 journals across the globe plan to ask scientists a list of questions about their race, ethnicity, and gender, according to an article written this year in Nature Magazineopens in new window. By gathering data on journals’ contributors, the hope is that publications can better grasp where they currently stand in regard to diversity and what vital work still needs to be done.

Psychologists are also starting to question the power of quantitative versus qualitative studies. Quantitative research methods have historically been thought of as more objective and “better” science. But in fact, these quantitative methods can be harmful to marginalized communities (Arellano, L., Education Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2022opens in new window).

“Systematically rejecting qualitative research limits research questions that can help minoritized populations,” said Prinstein. “Sometimes research requires a different perspective with different methodologies.” Qualitative research can also unearth new psychological experiences and constructs in ways that quantitative methods do not, Smith-Bynum noted.

Luckily, change is afoot. “In the past 10 years, the content in PsycArticles—which includes all the APA published journals and the English language Hogrefe journals—that has the methodology index term “qualitative” has quadrupled,” said Rose Sokol, PhD, a social psychologist and publisher of journals at APA. “More journals are referring specifically to qualitative methodology in their scope statements.”

APA has also created numerous resources to help individuals who wish to engage in qualitative science, Sokol noted. These include the Essentials of Qualitative Methods Seriesopens in new window; an article on reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods researchopens in new window in psychology; and the peer-reviewed journal Qualitative Psychology, which started in 2014 in order to feature research that employs qualitative and mixed methods designs. The journal was founded in partnership with the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology, a section of APA’s Division 5 (Quantitative and Qualitative Methods), which had focused on only quantitative methods in the past.

Arellano has also noticed that teachers and researchers in higher education positions have become more critical of qualitative metrics. Specifically, Quantitative Critical Race Theory, or QuantCrit, articles are on the rise. This is a rapidly developing research approach that aims to both challenge and improve the use of statistical data in social research by applying the insights of Critical Race Theory (Castillo, W., & Gillborn, D., EdWorkingPapers, No. 22-546, 2022opens in new window).

The work of QuantCrit rests on five key principles:

• racism is at the center of scientific research
• numbers are not neutral
• categories are not natural
• data cannot speak for itself and instead requires voices and insight
• social justice and equity must be considered in research

“It is appearing more in the scholarship. I’m still hoping that those perspectives translate into graduate program curricula in the next decade or so,” said Arellano.