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psyc 322 > 3. Research Methods in Aging > Flashcards

3. Research Methods in Aging Flashcards

Includes chapter 3

1
Q

what different research methods can be used for adult development and aging?

A
  • experimental designs
  • quasi-experimental designs
  • correlational designs
  • cross-sectional
  • longitudinal
    • prospective
  • sequential
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2
Q

what are the characteristics of an experimental design?

A
  • there are two or more conditions
  • everything is held constant except the IV
  • there is some sort of manipulation or treatment
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3
Q

what are the benefits and disadvantages of using the experimental method?

A

benefits
- ability to make causal claims
- examine interactions with age (2 IVs)
- ex. age differences in recall of memories for different stimuli

disadvantages
- cannot examine whether aging causes changes
- but can test whether certain things impact people who are old
- can’t randomly assign age

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4
Q

what are the characteristics of a quasi-experimental design?

A
  • subjects are not randomly assigned to conditions
  • subjects are selected based on pre-existing values of the independent variable
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5
Q

what are the benefits and disadvantages of using the quasi-experimental method?

A

benefits
- allows researchers to examine the effect of some “treatment” that may not be ethical or logistically possible

disadvantages
- has less internal validity than experiments
- can’t determine if aging causes changes

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6
Q

what are the characteristics of a correlational design?

A
  • a type of non-experiment
  • measure 2 or more different variables in a sample
    • how co-related are the variables?
    • how strongly is one associated with the other?
  • variables need to be continuous and not grouped
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7
Q

what is a bivariate correlation?

A
  • a statistic that indexes the degree of relationship between two continuous variables
  • +/- = direction of relationship
  • number = strength of the relationship
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8
Q

what are the benefits and disadvantages of using the correlational method?

A

benefits
- describes the relationship between two variables
- ex. age and reaction time

disadvantages
- cannot infer causation
- only useful for linear relationships
- doesn’t tell us about any one individual
- cohort and time of measurement effects

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9
Q

what are the different types of descriptive statistics?

A
  • cross sectional (age differences)
  • longitudinal (age changes)
  • sequential
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10
Q

what are age effects?

A
  • differences caused by underlying processes that occur with aging (biological/psychological)
    • what researchers are interested in
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11
Q

what are cohort effects?

A
  • differences caused by experiences and circumstances unique to the generation to which one belongs
    • normative, history graded influences
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12
Q

what are time of measurement effects?

A
  • differences stemming from sociocultural, environmental, historical, or other events at the time of data collection
    • might impact responses of participants and possibly create a cohort effect seen in the future
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13
Q

what are the characteristics of cross sectional research designs?

A
  • measure multiple age groups at one time
  • don’t know why groups differ, just know whether they do or don’t differ
  • subject to cohort effects
  • key to controlling for cohort differences is for researchers to select younger samples comparable in important ways to the older sample
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14
Q

what is task equivalence and why is it important?

A
  • different age groups may very well react differently to the test materials, causing performance differences to be an artifact of the design
    • need to take this into account when choosing research design
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15
Q

what are the benefits and disadvantages of cross sectional research designs?

A

benefits
- examine age differences in some variable of interest
- fast and usually cheap
- addresses time of measurement effects (kind of)
- we are comparing groups to each other, they all experience the same thing at the same time
- the latest and most up‐to‐date technology can be used

disadvantages
- it may not be representative
- will the 60 year old we measured today have the happiness level of the 90 year olds in 30 years?
- doesn’t examine age change
- doesn’t account for cohort effects
- often use extreme age groups

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16
Q

what are the characteristics of a longitudinal research design?

A
  • follow the same group of people over some period of time
  • period of time depends on variables of interest
    • cognitive development timeline differs for children vs. adults
  • still can’t say if it is an age effect because it doesn’t account for time of measurement effect
17
Q

what is a prospective study?

A

researchers sample from a population of interest before they develop a particular type of illness or experience a particular type of life event

18
Q

what is selective attrition?

A
  • participants who drop out of a longitudinal study are not necessarily representative of the sample that was originally tested
    • non-random loss of participants; death, illness, etc
19
Q

what is terminal decline?

A
  • individuals gradually lose cognitive abilities as they draw closer to death
    • pull down group averages, and when they drop out the averages go up again
    • shows improvement where there isn’t any
20
Q

what are the benefits and disadvantages of longitudinal research design?

A

benefits
- allows assessment of actual changes as individuals age
- prospective longitudinal designs: watches for outcomes during the study to examine suspected risk/protective factors

disadvantages
- time of measurement and age confounded
- don’t know if it is generalizable to other cohorts
- attrition - some people drop out, die, move away, lose interest
- sick people might drop out, so the happiness average is higher than it should be
- time consuming and expensive
- measures/technology may change
- researcher’s interest/capacity
- progression of knowledge

21
Q

what are the characteristics of a sequential research design?

A
  • includes a cross-sectional study conducted at two or more times of measurement
  • includes two or more longitudinal designs that represent two or more cohorts
  • additional intake adds new cohorts and addresses attrition
  • addresses time of measurement effect and cohort effect
  • can be used to compare birth cohorts and timepoint cohorts
22
Q

what is the Most Efficient Design?

A
  • set of three designs manipulating the variables of age, cohort, and time of measurement
  • it enables the most amount of information to be condensed into the most inclusive data framework
23
Q

what are the three designs in the Most Efficient Design?

A
  • time sequential - data are organized by age and time of measurement
  • cohort sequential - cohorts are compared at different ages
  • cross sequential - cohorts are examined at different times of measurement
24
Q

what are the benefits and disadvantages of sequential research design?

A

benefits
- can examine possible cohort effects
- permits different types of comparisons to be made
- examine and control possible confounding of effects

disadvantages
- attrition (selective?)
- time consuming & expensive
- possible practice effects
- measures/technology
- researchers
- progression of knowledge

25
Q

what are the different types of research methods?

A
  • laboratory studies
  • qualitative studies
  • archival research
  • epidemiological studies
  • case reports
  • focus groups
  • daily diaries
  • observational methods
  • meta-analyses
26
Q

what are epidemiological studies?

A
  • epidemiology - study of the distribution and determinants of health‐related states or events
  • an epidemiological study may use survey methodology asking about a particular disease
  • finds prevalence and incidence statistics
  • prevalence statistics - provide estimates of the percentage of people who have ever had symptoms in a particular period
  • incidence statistics - provide estimates of the percentage of people who first develop symptoms in a given period
27
Q

why would a researcher choose to use a focus group?

A
  • less formal research method where a meeting of a group of respondents is oriented around a particular topic of interest
  • investigator attempts to identify important themes in the discussion and keep the conversation oriented to these themes
  • goal is to develop concrete research questions to pursue in subsequent studies
  • particularly useful when little pre‐existing research on the topic is available
28
Q

why would a researcher choose to use daily diaries?

A
  • participants enter data on a daily basis when researchers want to examine day-to-day variations in a measure of interest
  • carried out over a period of weeks or months
  • researchers can track small variations in conditions that they believe may influence people’s day‐to‐day functioning

psyc 322 (14 decks)

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