Methodological Problems in Research on Stress

Research on stress has available to it the same array of research strategies, data collection methods, and data analysis techniques as does research on any other problem area within the behavioral sciences. It therefore falls heir to the same array of nasty and seemingly intractible methodological problems that beset research throughout the behavioral sciences. It is not so much the case that stress research poses new and different methodological problems as that research on stress makes certain methodological problems even more salient and more difficult to handle than they usually are. So this chapter will concentrate on the methodological problems to which stress research is especially vulnerable. It must be noted that these are by no means the only methodological problems with which stress researchers need be concerned.