Ch 6: Nonexperimental Research Designs Flashcards
What is a case study?
A case study is when a researcher studies a perticular person or group. These are often rare and extraordinary cases that would not be seen in a large number of people.
Example: Phineas Gage, the man who lost a part of his brain in a railroad accident, was a case study.
What is a census?
A census is a body of data collected from virtually every member of a poplation of interest
What is a survey?
Surveys identify a subset of people in the population (or a sample) who are then studied. The responses are then used to estimate that responses of the entire population.
What is a population survey?
A population survey uses random sampling to identify a sample of people to be surveyed.
What is cluster sampling?
Researchers who use cluster sampling begin by creating a manageable list of all the possible locations in which they can find members of the population in which they are interested. They then take random samples of people from a number of those locations to create their survey.
What is sampling error?
Sampling error reflects the likely discrepancy between the results one obtains in a specific sample and the results one would have been likely to have obtained from the entire population
What is epedemiology?
Epidemiology refers to the scientific study of the causes of disease. It is a type of single variable research.
Exmple: Clinical epidemiologists would like to estimate the proportion of people in a population who suffer from specific disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, OCD, or substance abuse.
What is research on public opinion?
Research on public opinion is designed to determine the attitudes and the preferences of specific populations (including marketing research). This is a kind of single variable research.
What is the false consensus effect?
The false consensus effect shows that most people overestimate the proportion of other people whose attitudes and behaviors are similar to their own.
Example: If you are someone who carries change on them then you are likely to say a higher percentage of other people also carry change on them, and vise versa.
What are correlational methods?
The idea behind correlational research is to generate a fixed set of observations about a group of people and test a hypotheses about the associations between different variables.
<u>Example:</u> Do men and women differ in their attitudes about capital punishment? Do cities in warmer climates have higher crime rates?
What is a person confound?
A person confound occurs when a variable (such as depression) seems to cause something because people who are high or low on the variable also happend to be high or low on some individual difference variable (i.e., some personality variable or demographic characteristic) that is associated the with the outcome variable of interest.
<u>Example:</u> People who are depressed usually tend to suffer from a lot of anxiety as well. As a result, a finding that seems to show that depression influences people’s self-views may actually reflect the influence of <em>anxiety</em> of people’s self-views.
What are environmental confounds?
Environmental confounds are similar to person confounds except that they refer to environmental (situational) rather than personological nuisance variables.
Example: Stressful life events might cause people to become more depressed while simultaneously lowering people’s self-views. If this happens, it might appear that depression is influencing self-views when it is not. <em>Life events</em> are influencing depression, and the <em>same</em> life events are also influencing self-views.
What are operational confounds?
Operation confounds are closely tied to the notion of a operational definitions. They occur when a measure designed to asses a specific construct such as despression, memory, or foot size, inadvertently measures something else as well.
Example: A doctor who wants to know about the physical symptoms of someone with depression might ask if they have trouble getting out of bed or trouble concentrating. However, both of these questions could be answered yes by someone who is elderly and <em>not</em> depressed. So the confound would be old age.
What is reverse causality?
Reverse causality is when a researcher who has controlled for every conceivable person, environmental, and operational confound might be tempted to conclude that A causes B. However, it is always possible that B causes A.
What is a longitudinal design?
A longitudinal design is when a researcher follows people over time and makes repeated assessments of the variables in which they are interested.
