Give three drawbacks to correlational research. For the example, “Nice people are more likely to get fired from their jobs than mean people,” explain how these problems would affect the research.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ans: Three potential problems with correlational research include the third variable problem, directionality, and the inability to infer causality. For the study, “Nice people are more likely to get fired from their jobs than mean people,” the third variable problem could arise in a number of ways. For example, the operational definition of “nice” could be a high score on humility (and mean could be a low score). While others might choose another operational definition, this is one that has not been heavily researched and is easy to measure. Participants would complete an established measure of humility and a demographics questionnaire including a statement as to how many times someone has been fired. Other variables that might be third variables include age. Older people, whether nice and humble or not, would have had more opportunities to be fired than younger individuals. The problem of directionality lies in the fact that we could not predict whether being nice led to being fired, whether being fired led to being nicer (a little posttraumatic growth perhaps), or whether the third variable explains both (maybe older people are nicer and more likely to get fired). Finally, there is the inability to infer causality. It would be nice to tell people that being humble leads to getting fired—so make sure people know about your accomplishments, brag a little. Unfortunately, if a relationship was discovered, we just cannot be that clear cut.