PSY 223 1st edition Lecture 4 9 3 Outline of Last Lecture I Research in Social Psych Outline of Current Lecture II Research continued a Memory issues in self reports III Observational Studies a Advantages b Disadvantages IV Experiments a Variables in experiments b Weaknesses of experiments V Archival Research VI Meta Analyses Current Lecture Chapter 2 continued How do you get around memory issues in self reports Solution reduce the time that elapses between experience and reporting of it Ways to do this Interval contingent self reports example married couple reports mood every night at the same time Signal contingent self reports example at a random time get a text and report who they are with and their current mood Event contingent self repots example report every time interaction of 10 minutes or more happens and then take a survey Observational Study These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute Direct observation systematic observations about behavior can be conducted in either lab setting or field natural setting Participant observations researcher makes systematic observations of behaviors and plays an active role in interactions usually not passed by ethics now Example person is a sociologist but pretends not to be in the study Advantages avoid faulty recollections other self report bias Disadvantages person knowing you re watching may affect behavior reactance effect Improvements interrater reliability degree of agreement between trained observers about what occurs use multiple observers addition of technology Experiments Laboratory experiments experiment takes place in controlled situation Field experiment experiment that takes place in everyday situations Higher in external validity but can t control Hard to get passed by ethics now Experiment form of research that can determine cause and effect relationships because experimenter has control over the conditions and participant randomly assigned to conditions Random assignment the placement of participants in experimental conditions based on change ex Flipping a coin this makes groups equivalent except exposure to independent variable can conclude that any difference between group on the dependent variable is due to independent variable Variables in Experiment Independent variable experimental factor that researcher manipulates Dependent variable measure depends on independent variable Subject variable characteristics of the participants in the experiment ex Gender western background vs east Asian which are pre existing and not manipulated Weakness of Experiment Many social phenomena can t be studied experimentally Experiments face several threats to internal validity degree to which there can be reasonable certainty that the independent variables in an experiment caused the effects obtained on the dependent variables Example threats to internal validity confound and experimenter expectancy effects Experiments also face problems with external validity degree to which there can be reasonable confidence that the results of the study would be obtained for other people and in other situation can you really generalize the results to other people situations or settings Example threats to external validity the sample not being able to generalize to other people and the setting situation Archival Research Involves analyzing information or data collected previously by others Particularly valuable for experiments examining cultural and historical trends Ex Government data diaries letters advertisements etc Meta Analyses Statistical procedure combined data from several studies can draw stronger conclusions about test of hypothesis