<P> In recent decades the participation of women as professional researchers in North American educational psychology has risen dramatically . </P> <P> Educational psychology, as much as any other field of psychology heavily relies on a balance of pure observation and quantitative methods in psychology . The study of education generally combines the studies of history, sociology, and ethics with theoretical approaches . Smeyers and Depaepe explain that historically, the study of education and child rearing have been associated with the interests of policymakers and practitioners within the educational field, however, the recent shift to sociology and psychology has opened the door for new findings in education as a social science . Now being its own academic discipline, educational psychology has proven to be helpful for social science researchers . </P> <P> Quantitative research is the backing to most observable phenomena in psychology . This involves observing, creating, and understanding a distribution of data based upon the studies subject matter . Researchers use particular variables to interpret their data distributions from their research and employ statistics as a way of creating data tables and analyzing their data . Psychology has moved from the "common sense" reputations initially posed by Thomas Reid to the methodology approach comparing independent and dependent variables through natural observation, experiments, or combinations of the two . Though results are still, with statistical methods, objectively true based upon significance variables or p - values . </P>

What type of knowledge is necessary for understanding and mastering educational psychology