Experimental psychology prospects and independent research

digiology

Hi all,


In the past year I have taken an interest in experimental psychology particularly in the areas of auditory/music cognition, perception and sequence learning.

Unfortunately I don't personally know anyone else involved in these areas or experimental psychology more generally and so its very difficult to gauge how hard it is to get employment in this area (for example after doing a PhD). Ideally I'd love to be an academic but I'm sure that's a tough one even though I do think I'm very good at this. What other career opportunities would be open to an experimental psychologist?

In any case its my intention to become a world expert in this area, its just a matter of either pursuing the career directly or finding another way of feeding and housing myself while I do research independently.

That brings me to another question, is independent research out of the question? How does one do real controlled experiments outside academia while maintiaining some credibility? (these wouldn't be controversial issues but I'm assuming there are standards by which an experiment is considered 'legit' regardless of its results plausibility)


Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

JuliusCaesar

Being an academic vs doing your own independent research.
Being paid to do research vs having to fund it yourself.
Having ethics cttee approval vs lack of any ethics cttee.
Having collaborators and assistants vs doing everything yourself.
Being able to access funding, grants etc vs subsidising your own research.
etc
Apart from academia, I don't know.

digiology

Thanks.


I suppose was wondering about submitting papers to journals where the experiments are done outside of the usual institutions in the field (like my sitting room lol).

JuliusCaesar

You may have difficulty getting the usual journals to accept it. Maybe try the Researcher forum - they may have more ideas.

Torakx

Im thinking the only way this could be possible is doing street surveys of somekind with a device if possible to aid in your experiment or theory or whatever it is you research.
You cant know something works well if its ment to be used with people if you dont try it on alot of people.It might be enough to prove that you might have something worth investing in and then can do a funded research and testing....maybe.
but i dont know much about all this,could be legal hurdles to pass though even to do that.Geez im afraid to do anything for money,let alone research, incase its bloody sanctioned against of needs to be taxed/monitored somehow