Psychology Notes Tue 9 2 14 Research Question A general question of interest posed by an investigator hypothesis A general question of interest posed by an investigator Research Design Vocabulary Independent Variable A variable under an experimenter s control Dependant Variable The variable we are measuring and looking for changes in External Validity The ability to generalize findings to real world settings Internal Validity The extent to which we can draw cause and effect inferences from a study Naturalistic Observation Design Watching participants behavior in real world settings without trying to manipulate their actions Good for ideas but hard to draw conclusions Case Study Examining one person or a small number of people over an extended period of time Pretty reflective or real world and better for internal validity Good for ideas Self Report Measures and Surveys Methods to assess characteristics interest opinion and attitudes Cause and effect only help when manipulating a variable Form hypothesis These reports are cost effective and easy Random Selection Every person in the population of interest has an equal chance of being chosen to participate Reliability of Measure Consistency of measurement can apply to questionnaires test retest reliability or observational measure interrater reliability Validity of Measure The extent to which a measure assesses what it claims to measure are you measuring how outgoing someone is or their optimism What are some advantages and disadvantages of self report measures Saves time Can t avoid self bias Get a lot more data People know us better than we know ourselves Rating Data Other Reports Observers make ratings rather than the individuals themselves Example Teacher Evals Halo effect If someone is nice that will effect how people view other things you do Correlational Designs Researchers examine the extent to which two variables are associated Not causing each other but correlating to each other Correlation does not equal causation It is impossible to tell from a correlational study to determine if a variable causes another one Features of a Correlation Direction A correlation can be positive as x goes up y goes up or negative as x goes up y goes down Form A correlation can be linear direct relationship or a non linear relationship relationship is different for various levels of x Strength A correlation can be strong a near 1 to 1 relationship between x and y or weak The Nature of Correlations Experimental Design Research design characterized by random assignment of participants to conditions and the manipulation of an independent variable Essential Components Random Assignment Randomly sort participants into groups Experimental Group The individuals that receive manipulation Control Group The individuals who do not receive the manipulation a comparison group Manipulation of an Independent Variable Independent variable the experimenter manipulates Dependant Variable measured variable to determine if the manipulation had an effect Additional Consideration Operational Definitions Confounding Variable control groups How are we going to define the independent and dependent variables Any variable that unintentionally differs between the experimental and Does Stretching improve mood Pitfalls in Experimental Designs The Placebo Effect Improving due to the expectation of improving The Nocebo Effect Harm resulting from the expectation of harm The Experimenter Expectancy Effect When a hypothesis leads to unintentional bias Demand Characteristics Participants may alter their behavior if they guess the purpose of the study Ethics in Research Psychologists need to be aware of the human element many more considerations need to be made in research with human subjects than in research with chemicals or plants Ethical Responsibilities Informed Consent Researchers must tell prospective participants what they are getting into prior to asking them to participate Protection from Harm Reasonable steps must be taken to protect participants from harm Debriefing Research are obliged to explain their hypothesizes in nontechnical language to participants after completion of the study Should ethical considerations for animals be different than for humans Statistics The application of mathematics to describing an analyzing data Descriptive Statistics Central Tendency We can discuss the mean average exam score though often the median where 50 fall above and below is more informative Variability Are there many students of average height in the classroom or are there a bunch of really short individuals and a bunch of really tall individuals Inferential Statistics Statistical Significance Statistical tests can determine if our finding is likely to have occurred by chance If it is not likely to have occurred by chance would happen less then 5 in 100 times then we say our finding is statistically significant Practical Significance does our finding mean something in the real world Peer Review A process by which psychological research is submitted for quality control by researchers in a similar domain
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