1 Research Flashcards
What’s an experiment?
When one or more variables are actively manipulated (or controlled) to see whether these produce changes in another variable(s).
True experiments can answer cause-and-effect questions.
What are observational studies?
Here, no variables are actively manipulated. These types of studies provide descriptive data.
Describe the research process
1 theory - contained in the intro
2 hypothesis - research aims/questions
3 experiment
Types of observational studies
CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH - explores relationships between variables
FIELD RESEARCH - naturalistic observations, study of records and artefacts; qualitative interviews
PARAMETER ESTIMATION - estimation of population characteristics
What is quantitive research?
Using numbers to describe, define, and compare data.
Can be descriptive and comparative.
What is qualitative research?
Non-numeric descriptors of data are used.
Good way for conveying meaning and context.
Population
The whole set of individuals that you are interested in studying; and that you want your data to generalise to.
Sample
The subset if the population; the participant you actually study.
Data
The measurements that were made on the participants of the study.
Data to present to others is best when it systematic, focused and replicable.
Cases
These are the individuals or instance that are being measured.
Variables
These are properties or characteristics of the events, objects or persons that may have different values at different times, depending on the conditions.
These are the factors being manipulated and measured.
Two types of variables
Independent and dependent
Independent variable
This is the variable that we manipulate.
Independent variables are the variables that we are interested in manipulating. This is to see if there is an affect on what we aim to measure.
Dependent variable
The dependent variable is the variable that we measure to see what’s the effect of the independent variable.
Types of research designs
• experiments (experimental)
• surveys; cross-sectional, longitudinal (observational)
• field research (observational)
- participant
- non-participant
• available data (observational)Typical designs in medicine
- randomised controlled trials
- cohort studies
- case control studies
- case series and single case studies
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs)
Two or more groups are created. These will be treated differently. Participants are randomly assigned to these groups. The investigator has control over the treatment and the assignment.
Experimental.
Cohort studies
This follows naturally occurring groups of people over time. It’s best for incidences or natural history of the condition.
Observational.
Case-control studies
A group of interest (cases) is compare to a group without the characteristics of interest (controls). It’s retrospective.
Single case studies/case series
Documentations of single cases. Can we either experimental or observational.
