3. Research Methods in Aging Flashcards
Includes chapter 3
what different research methods can be used for adult development and aging?
- experimental designs
- quasi-experimental designs
- correlational designs
- cross-sectional
- longitudinal
- prospective
- sequential
what are the characteristics of an experimental design?
- there are two or more conditions
- everything is held constant except the IV
- there is some sort of manipulation or treatment
what are the benefits and disadvantages of using the experimental method?
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
what are the characteristics of a quasi-experimental design?
- subjects are not randomly assigned to conditions
- subjects are selected based on pre-existing values of the independent variable
what are the benefits and disadvantages of using the quasi-experimental method?
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
what are the characteristics of a correlational design?
- 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
what is a bivariate correlation?
- a statistic that indexes the degree of relationship between two continuous variables
- +/- = direction of relationship
- number = strength of the relationship
what are the benefits and disadvantages of using the correlational method?
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
what are the different types of descriptive statistics?
- cross sectional (age differences)
- longitudinal (age changes)
- sequential
what are age effects?
- differences caused by underlying processes that occur with aging (biological/psychological)
- what researchers are interested in
what are cohort effects?
- differences caused by experiences and circumstances unique to the generation to which one belongs
- normative, history graded influences
what are time of measurement effects?
- 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
what are the characteristics of cross sectional research designs?
- 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
what is task equivalence and why is it important?
- 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
what are the benefits and disadvantages of cross sectional research designs?
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
