Overview of Exam 1 A 35 to 45 Multiple Choice Questions B Should take roughly 50 minutes to complete but you have the full 1hr15min and I ll stay longer too time is not an issue C Roughly 65 about research design concepts 35 about statistics interpreting SPSS output Stats questions will be very similar to what was asked of you in lab except answered in multiple choice format D Questions will be based primarily on information in the lecture slides in class lecture For studying purposes the readings are probably best used as a reference when something from your notes or the slides is unclear or to buttress your understanding of the material If a topic or term is not on the outline below it will NOT be on the exam I will write the two z score formula s on the board and hand out a z table on test day E F Topic Outline for Exam 1 The Science Game The Cycle of Scientific Progress Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 1 9 1 14 lectures o The Science Game The Cycle of Scientific Progress 3 non scientific modes of understanding their limits Experience What seems to have been true for me in the past o Problems Experience is confounded doesn t allow for systematic comparison Intuition What feels like the true answer o Problems Patternicity AKA present present bias motivates us to find meaningful patterns associations in meaningful and meaningless noise availability heuristic makes us think more memorable phenomena are more likely or true once our beliefs are formed they are reinforced through confirmation bias Tradition Authority What does my culture believe to be true What do experts say to be true o Problems Authority may be just as prone to above biases sometimes we are unaware how extensively our culture has influenced our worldview Empirical evidence An observation or measurement that contributes to either verifying or falsifying a claim about what s true is independent of the observer Empirical testing Any situation or procedure that creates empirical evidence which allows a claim on truth to be verified or falsified Falsifiability Replication Empirical tests must be replicable and verifiable or falsifiable Golden Rule of Science Scientific claims must be subject to empirical tests that produce empirical evidence o The Cycle of Scientific Progress Golden Assumption If an object of study exists in nature it is knowable the object of study is lawful if we could perfectly control all input variables we could perfectly predict and control the outcome Golden Caveat The findings of our science are conditional and probabilistic we discover the conditions under which phenomena tend to occur for the majority of people there will always be exceptions to our findings because we can t control for everything Theory Data cycles If then reasoning enables us to test and refine theories Basic Applied Cycle If then reasoning also enables us to take basic findings and apply them to more realistic scenarios Construct validity Does the operational definition of the variable fully and accurately capture the conceptual definition of the variable External Validity generalizability How widely does the claim generalize Operationalizing Measures Ch 5 1 16 lecture o 3 types of claims Descriptive Frequency Claims about what things tend be like and how frequently certain values or scores on a variable occur Association Claims about a possible relationship between two measured Causal Claims stating that changes in one variable induce changes in another variables variable o Psychological construct vs operationalized definitions Any explanatory variable that is not directly observable or tangible EX intelligence is a psychological construct to make claims about constructs we must operationalize them turn abstract constructs into specific measurable instances that are reliable and valid o Multiple ways to Operationalize psychological constructs Self Report Record people answers to questions about themselves Pros Easy and low cost large anonymous samples may be most appropriate Cons Open to fabrication and social desirability biases memory distortions laziness may not be useful for non conscious constructs Observational Record observable behaviors or traces of behavior Pros More shielded for respondent bias can be recorded with less interference sometimes most appropriate operationalization of a construct Cons Can be more complicated to collect subject to experimenters bias discrepancies arise over behaviors ethics Physiological Recording biological data believed to be associate with construct Pros Hard to consciously control or fake precise perceived as credible Cons Can be expensive and time consuming may require technical expertise machinery procedures sensitive to uncontrollable sources of error ethics o Scales of Measurement Nominal variables in which the values are categories or labels Ex colors o Validity o Reliability also reinforced in 2 4 lecture on correlations Ordinal variables in which the values indicate some kind of ranking numeric but can t do mathematical equations EX where one finishes in a race Interval variables in which equal differences in value represent equal differences in magnitude can do mathematical equations EX temperature Ratio same as interval but zero means none EX number of seconds Face Operationalized measure seems to plausibly and reasonably capture the construct of interest subjective Content Operationalized measure must capture all parts of a defined construct subjective Concurrent Operationalized measure is related to and correlated with concrete outcomes that it theoretically should be related to empirical Divergent AKA Discriminant Measure should be unrelated to measures of other constructs that are unrelated empirical Predictive AKA Criterion Same new operationalization should predict future outcomes empirical Internal people are responding similarly to items meant to assess the same construct Chronbach s alpha measures internal reliability 70 and high is preferable high internal reliability means people are highish or lowish on all items Test Retest subjects should score similarly the first time as the second time and so on and so forth Inter rater measures the agreement between two independent raters in scoring behavioral or observational measures Pearson s r AKA correlation coefficient tells you the magnitude and direction of the association between two variables Open ended questions respondents generate their own answers Advantages rich in detail can take answer in many directions allows for
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