All topics Flashcards
What makes a good theory?
- Falsifiability
- Parsimony (elegance of theory – simplest explanation is best)
- coherence
- correspondence with reality (more likely to have a high pay-off)
Reliability of Measures
- Test-retest – administering a test twice
- inter-rater reliability – extent to which 2 raters (judges) obtain the same result using the same measure
- Split-half reliability – a test is split in 2 and the scores from each half are compared with eachother
Validity of measures:
- Face validity – the extent to which an assessment measures the variable/construct in purports to measure
- Content validity –
- Construct validity – 2 types
– convergent – when 2 tests that purport to measure the same thing are highly related - divergent (discriminant) – tests that measure different but related constructs should not be highly correlated (eg. IQ for spatial v reading)
Research method:
- Experimental
- quasi-experimental – (manipulation of IV but cannot randomly assign participants) eg. male v female, smoker v non-smoker. Don’t talk about cause and effect
- Correlational
What are the different kinds of research design?
- Between subjects – different participants assigned to each condition
- within subjects or repeated measures design – each participant exposed to both conditions
- matched pairs – different participants assigned to each group but matched on particular characteristics
What is difference between descriptive and inferential statistics?
- Descriptive statistics – summarise data eg. mean, median, mode, variance, SD,
- Inferential statistics – help us test hypotheses. Allow us to make generalisation’s about populations of interest based on samples eg. correlation, regression, ANOVA
Define:
- Mean
- median
- Mode
- Reliability
- Validity
Mean – average
Median – the middle score in a distribution
Mode – score that occurs the most often
Reliability v validity
Reliability – consistency of a measure
Validity – accuracy of a measure (measures what it purports to measure)
How do you find the median with an even number of scores?
- add two middle scores and divde by 2 – ie. Average them
Describe different scales of measurement
- Nominal – consists of categories with no underlying scale or order. Eg. religious affiliation – Christian, buddhist, hindu, muslim etc.
- Ordinal – Consists of categories that are ORDERED, but don’t know what the distance is between ranks (ie. The distance between scale values is unknown). Eg. police ranks.
- Interval – Meaningful distances between points on the scale eg. termperature. Interval scales lack true zero point (zero is the absence of something, you can still feel temperature at zero)
- Ratio – All the characteristics of an interval scale plus a true zero point – weight and length are examples
Discrete v continuous variable
Discrete – Takes on whole numbers
Continuous – can take any fraction on non-whole number
Shape of Distribution
- normal – bell shaped
- positively skewed – tail pointing to the right
- negatively skewed – tail pointing to the left
Research ethics (1q)
- informed consent
- voluntary participation
- passive deception (don’t tell whole truth but don’t tell lies)
- active deception (delierately mislead the participant with information)
- withdrawal anytime
Central Tendency (3 q’s
the tendency for the values of a random variable to cluster round it’s mean, mode, or median
mean/median/mode – which would be the best to use?
- mean is affected by outliers and can be skewed
- median – less affected by outliers and skewed data
- mode (most frequent) – normally used for categorical data – problematic when 2 categories have highest value
- not a good mark when most common data is far away from the rest of the data in the set.
- when data is skewed – median is best representative of central location of data
Type of variable and best measure of central tendency?
Nominal - Mode
Ordinal - Median
Interval/Ratio (not skewed) - Mean
Interval/Ratio (skewed)- Median
Population v sample
Populaiton – all the individuals of interest
- population values are called parameters
Sample – the individuals selected from the population used in study
- sample values are called statistic
Sampling error
the discrepancy between population parameter and sample statistic
What is the relationship between sample statistics and population parameters?
A sample is a part or portion of a population
- parameter is a measure of describing whole population
- statistic is a measure of a sample/portion of a target population
What is standard devitation?
a measure of variability – how spread out are the scores?
Variability 3 (qs) What does SS denote?
- sum of squares = sum of squared deviation from the mean
Variability?
- how much scores vary from each other and from the mean
Variance
- the average of the squared differences from the mean
Standard deviation?
- numerical depiction of variability
- under a normal distribution 68% of scores fall within +_ 1 SD from the mean (95.44 within 2SD, 99.72 within 3SD)
Define and describe the relationship between variance and SD?
- As variance increases so does standard deviation
- low variability in data set = low standard deviation
What are the degrees of freedom?
In a sample N-1 scores are free to vary. For example if have sample of 3 scores and we know first 2 scores and the mean we know what the 3rd score must be. So 2 scores are free to vary but third is not, thus N-1.
Why do we adjust degrees of freedom in a sample?
We do n-1 because of sampling error in sample that may not be representative of the population
What is a z-score?
- a standardised score (transformation of distribution of raw scores into z-score distribution)
- Z-score will always have mean of 0 and SD of 1
- Z-score is expressed in standard deviation units
What do you need to know to calculate z-score?
X – individual score
M () – sample mean
SD () – sample standard deviation
If you convert all the raw scores to z-scores what do you get?
- mean = 0
- SD = 1
- distribution is same shape as before ALWAYS (ie. Still normal/skewed etc.)
Benefit? – allows you to compare scores from different distributions
What does a z-score of +1 mean? What does z-score of -2 mean?
- The score is one SD above mean
- the score is 2 SD below the mean
Why do we hypothesis test?
- To get around heuristics (mental shortcuts – availability/representative) and human biases (hindsight/cognitive)
What is a theory?
- a ‘model’ that describes how certain phenomenon work
What is a hypothesis?
- A statement derived from a theory or theories about the relationship between variables or differences between groups
What is the null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis?
null - states there is no effect
alternative - states there is a difference
Error Types
Type I – Reject the null hypothesis when it is TRUE (false positive) (alpha - 5% chance)
Type II – Accept the null hypothesis when it is FALSE (false negative) (beta – 20% chance)
Type III – (only applicable to a directional hypothesis; H1) – predicting the inverse of a
relationship
What does p
In NHST p < .05 means that there is less than a 5% chance of obtaining the results (or more extreme) if the null hypothesis were true
What factors affect the p-value?
- Size of mean differences – Increases probability of rejecting the null
- Variability of scores – decreases probability of rejecting null
- sample size – larger sample size increases probability of rejecting the null
What is correlation?
- when 2 variables are related to eachother a correlation exists
- measures relationship between 2 variables
- correlation is a prediction NOT causation
What is the correlation coefficient? (r)
- numerical index of strength and direction of relationship
- expressed as number between 0 and 1
- direction can be positive or negative (as one goes up the other goes up OR as one goes up the other goes down)
- numbers closer to 1 indicate stronger relationship
What does positive/negative/no correlation look like on scatter plot?
- positive – slopes up from left to right
- negative – slopes down from left to right
- no correlation – no pattern (ill defined scatter)
Perfect correlation
- perfect linear relationship – every change in x is accompanied by a corresponding change in y variable
What is small/medium/large correlation? (coefficient (r))
- small – 0.1 to 0.3
- medium – 0.3 to 0.5
- large – 0.5 to 1.0
What is the coefficient of determination?
- is the correlation coefficient squared
- the percentage variation in one variable that can be predicted based on the other variable
- as the magnitude of the correlation increases, our ability to predict one variable based on knowledge of the other variable increases
Calculate the coefficient of determination from r = .70 and what does the result mean?
=r squared
= .70 x .70
= .49
Means that variable X can account for 49% of the variation in variable Y
The higher the correlation coefficient the higher the coefficient of determination will be
What is the 3rd variable problem?
- As correlation is a prediction not a causation, the observed relationship may be accounted for by some other third variable eg. size of foot might be strongly correlated to IQ in children, but the 3rd variable – age may account for the relationship
What are the assumptions for correlations?
- Independence – each participant should participate only once in the research and should not influence the participation of others
- Normality – each variable should be normally distributed – ie. Data form a symmetrical bell-shaped curve about the mean. To assess normality we can look at Skewness and kurtosis
- Linearity – should be a linear (straight line) relationship between the variables. If the relationship is not linear it will not be adequately captured and summarised by Pearson’s r.
- Homoscedasticity – the error variance is assumed to be the same at all points along the linear relationship. That is the variability in one variable should be similar across all values of the other variable.
What is skewness?
- is a measure of symmetry of distribution
- when the skewness statistic is 0 the distribution is perfectly symmetrical
What is kurtosis?
- how peaked or flat is the distribution
- a kurtosis statistic of 0 (plue skewness statistic of 0) indicates distribution is normally distributed.