Michael Dulay: Thinking about Psychology

1. Behavior Identification Recognizing and defining a behavior.	What is the target behavior? Why do people engage in it? How often does the behavior occur?
2. Process Selection Recognizing the appropriate process needed to understand the behavior.	What steps should I take to study human behavior?
3. Representation of Information Representing the information both internally and externally in a meaningful way	Should I make and record observations? Where should I make these observations? Who should I observe? Should I plot the behavior that I observe on a chart?
4. Strategy Formation Putting the selected processes in sequence so that they will act on the representation	When should I start making observations? Should they be made inconspicuously? If so, should I hide? What exactly am I looking for? (it is too much to try and observe all of a person's behavior) Is an experiment feasible? Would it be ethical?
5. Allocation of Resources Deciding how to spend time and other resources effectively to execute the selected strategy	How often should I make my observations? Should I pay others to help me make observations?
6. Solution Monitoring Remaining aware of what has been done, what is being done, and what remains to be done.	What behaviors have I observed? Do I need to make more observations?
7. Evaluating Solutions Sensitivity to feedback and translating the feedback into action.	WHY do people behave the way they do? Did I make a sufficient number of observations? Who did I observe- what were the demographics? Do demographics affect human behavior? Did my presence affect the outcome(s)? What have others said about the behaviors that I observed?