ABSTRACT
The reader has likely received basic training in research methodology prior to taking course work in clinical psychology per se. Clinical psychology pulls together a number of different knowledge domains from psychology and applies them to real-world problems and populations. Therefore, there is inevitable overlap in the methods used in the practice of clinical psychology and those used to acquire core knowledge in psychology overall. General principles of experimentation in the laboratory are least relevant in this context and will not receive much attention here (for a review we recommend Howitt, 2005; Rosnow & Rosenthal, 2001). This chapter will therefore focus on research methods and introduce the relevant concepts that clinical psychologists should be particularly familiar with, namely:
Test development and test validation.
Evaluations of the effects of treatments and innovative clinical practices.
Methods of research on psychopathological mechanisms.
