Overview of Final Exam A The Final Exam will be 60 70 Multiple Choice Questions B It should take roughly 1 hour to complete but you have the full 2 hours C It will we be roughly equally divided between Exam 1 Exam 2 and new material D Roughly 65 will be about research design concepts and scenarios and ethics 35 about statistics interpreting SPSS output E The only calculations required will be for z scores I will again provide you with a table and the formula Please bring a calculator F 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 G If a topic or term is not on the outline below it will NOT be on the exam This is the complete review for professor Johnson Spring Semester PSY3213 C The review is very thorough and detailed with plenty of examples to help better understand the material I plan on acing the final with this review Everything Highlighted in yellow pertains to the state mandated exam The last 10 pages are just the jeopardy questions and answers Topic Outline for Exam 1 Material The Science Game The Cycle of Scientific Progress Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 1 8 1 13 lectures The Science Game The Cycle of Scientific Progress Scientific inquiry strives for an understanding of reality that is true 3 non scientific modes of understanding their limits Experience What seems to have been true in the past Intuition What feels like the true answer Problems with this mode of understanding Experience is confounded Too many things happen at once therefore the true cause is difficult to isolate Experience does not allow systematic comparison We can t test alternatives for we have no access to a parallel universe We are prone to mistakes and biases in intuition Patternicity We are motivated to find meaningful patterns in meaningful and meaningless noise the rustle in the trees skinner s superstitious pigeons and professor s wife Bulgarian fortune teller The availability Heuristic We tend to think that more memorable phenomena are more likely to be true People think more deaths are due to plane accidents then car accidents Once our beliefs are formed they tend to be reinforced through Confirmation Biases People seek out information that confirms their original positions people interpret that information in a belief consistent way and people are more critical of evidence that disconfirms their belief Authorities themselves may be prone to biases Group think Going against the group has social consequences Asch s conformity studies Sometimes we are unaware at how culturally biased our facts are Cases of arranged marriages Tradition and Authority What does my culture or trusted knowledgeable people claim to be true Empirical evidence empirical testing o Empirical Evidence is an observation or measurement that contributes to either verifying or falsifying a claim about what s true independent of the observer The evidence must be the same no matter who observes it o Empirical Testing is any situation or procedure that creates empirical evidence which allows a claim on truth to be verified or falsified MUST BE REPLICABLE AND VERIFIABLE Golden Rule Golden Assumption o If an object of study exists in nature it is knowable o It is possible to fully describe and explain anything that exists in nature o The object of study is lawful If we could perfectly control all of the input variables we could perfectly predict and control the outcome The Cycle of Scientific Progress The role of If Then reasoning in If then reasoning enables us to test and refine theories o No ONE experiment or study ever proves a theory Theory Data cycles If x is true then we should expect to see y happen Basic Applied Cycle Taking basic findings and applying them to more realistic scenarios Theory Testing Multiple levels of analysis We need multiple levels of analysis to explain human behavior from the biological to the socio cultural Its not Nature vs Nature its both External Validity generalizability W E I R D samples Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic o WEIRD is not necessarily the norm o 70 of all psych citations originate from US research institutions compared with 37 in a field like chemistry o The top four countries for psychology citations are all English speaking Operationalizing Measures Ch 5 1 15 lecture Psychological construct vs operationalized definitions o Psychological constructs any explanatory variable that is not directly observable or tangible Examples of a construct are intelligence happiness and addiction because they are variables that cannot be directly observable or tangible o Operationalize is what we need to do to study constructs To operationalize a construct is to turn abstract constructs into specific measureable instances that are both reliable and valid Multiple ways to Operationalize psychological constructs Researchers should use MULTIPLE measures and operationalization to best support a hypothesis or theory Self Report Verbal responses to interviews or questionnaire items Observational Recording observable behaviors measuring happiness by number of smiles Physiological Recording biological data believed to be associated with a construct dopamine and endorphins levels to the brain to measure happiness Pro s Easy low cost large anonymous samples can be quickly studied may be the most appropriate format more shielded from respondent bias2 can be recorded with less interference less obvious sometimes most appropriate operationalization hard to consciously control or fake can be very precise perceived as credible Con s open fabrication and social desirability biases1 memory distortions lazy or inattentive responding may not be useful for non conscious or non declarative constructs may be more complicated to collect maybe experimenters see what they want to see interpretation issues Ethics expensive and time consuming may require technical expertise with machinery procedures may be most sensitive to uncontrollable sources of error Ethics Validity vs Reliability To know if our operationalization is good it must be valid and reliable o Valid the operationalized measure is actually capturing what it claims to be measuring as best and as completely as possible A 34 inch yard stick is an invalid measure of a yard 36 inches o Reliable the measure produces consistent scores when constructs are stable and it captures change when
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