Читать книгу Abnormal Psychology - William J. Ray - Страница 111

 3.1 Describe the characteristics of the scientific approach.

 3.2 Describe the characteristics of the nonexperimental methods of psychological research.

 3.3 Explain why the experimental research method is generally considered more reliable than nonexperimental methods.

 3.4 Identify the steps in designing an experimental study.

 3.5 Identify other types of research and considerations in studying psychopathology.

 3.6 Discuss the ethical considerations that must be observed in performing psychological research.

Let us begin with a story that took place in Central Europe over 150 years ago, in 1847 to be exact. At the Vienna General Hospital, a physician named Ignaz Semmelweis faced a serious problem when he noticed that previously healthy women who had just given birth to healthy children were dying. The women died of a condition that included fever, chills, and seizures. As you can imagine, numerous theories were offered. Some thought the deaths were related to the diet of the women. Perhaps they drank bad water. Maybe the flowers that were brought to their rooms were the problem.

Observing the overall conditions in the hospital, Semmelweis saw that other women in the same hospital who ate the same food, drank the same water, and smelled the same flowers did not die. Consequently, he reasoned, it was not the food, water, or flowers that caused the deaths. Yet the fact remained that women who had just given birth died of the mysterious condition. Semmelweis became aware of a crucial clue when he learned that a hospital assistant who had accidentally cut his hand during an autopsy later died. Further, this assistant displayed the same symptoms as the mothers. What was the connection between the death of the assistant and the deaths of the mothers? Was there any connection at all?

One of the first questions Semmelweis asked is where the assistant worked. Perhaps the autopsy laboratory might be the cause of the mysterious deaths. To evaluate this notion, he traveled to other hospitals and recorded what physicians did just before delivering babies. From these observations, he learned that some physicians gave pathology lectures to the interns in the hospital as part of their daily duties. He also noted that when the physicians who delivered the babies came directly from a pathology lecture in which they handled diseased tissue or performed an autopsy, the death rate was highest.

Semmelweis suggested that it was the physicians who were transferring the diseases from the pathological tissue to the healthy mothers, just as the assistant had accidentally infected himself with the knife cut. The physicians of the day were outraged at the suggestion that they were the cause of the women’s deaths. Semmelweis found further evidence by demonstrating that in hospitals where some births were assisted by midwives rather than physicians, those mothers survived at a much higher rate.

In a rather striking, though not totally controlled, experiment, Semmelweis is said to have placed himself at the door to the delivery ward and forced all physicians who entered to wash their hands first. The number of deaths decreased dramatically. Although not everyone accepted Semmelweis’s findings, these data spoke for themselves, and modern medical practice has been shaped by this event (Glasser, 1976).