Chapter 2 Conducting Psychological Research Flashcards
Serendipity
the accidental discovery that comes about when looking to discover something else
Psych Articles
APA database
less than 100 Journal articles
-full text access for all articles
-parameters for finding author, titles, keywords
Psych Info
2500 journal articles including Psych Articles
a database of abstracts rather than online articles
Boolean Operators
“and” “or” “not”
Structure of research article
Abstract- summary
Intro-general topic, specific questions
Method-subsections, participants, design, procedure
Results-analyse data
Discussion- Expand on key findings, limitations, further study
References- cite sources
Understanding research Articles
- abstract and methods is best, or discussion
- results compliacted
Review articles:
Qualitative and Quantitative review
- Qualitative: Authors review imperial evidence in a literature
non-statistical literature
-Quantitative:
Meta-analyses: researches gathers information from several articles on a particular topic of interest. Then evaluates the information of all these studies and combines the results to see what the most consistent outcome/overall state of the literature
Inductive Reasoning
using specific facts to form a general conclusion
-Data driven “bottom-up”
Theory
a set of formal statements that specifies the how and why variables are related
Deductive Reasoning
A general principle to reach a more specific conclusion
-theory driven “top-down”
Testability
Possible to gather evidence to disconfirm the prediction FALSIFY
Quantitative Research
numerical data and statistical analyses to interpret, describe, and understand behaviour
Qualitative Research
Achieve relatively holistic or thematic description and understanding of behaviour, through non-stat analyses
Content Analyses
an analyses of different types of content found within or represented by a set of data
Experiment
Manipulating variables to gain control over extraneous factors and measure participants response
Between-subject Design
Each participant engages in only 1 condition of the independent variable
-random assignment used
Within-subject Design
Every participant engages in all I.V conditions
Confounding Variable
An extraneous factor that systematically varies along with the focused variables being studied, providing potential alternative explanations.
Counterbalancing
varies the order of conditions in an experiment so neither has an advantage.
1/2 of participants engage in 1 condition first
descriptive Research
(non-experimental) measures variables, but does not manipulate them
Extraneous variable
a factor that is not the focus of the study, but could influence the outcome
External validity
inferences about the generalizability of the findings beyond experimental circumstances
Internal Validity
degree to which we can infer that one variable had causal influence over another variable. Control increases validity
Cross-sectional Research Design and its DISADVANTAGE
people of different ages compared at the same point in time
-disadvantage: COHORT EFFECT: different age groups grow up in different environments, and have different histories.
Longitudinal Research Design
Same participants tested across different periods of time
- studying aging process in same people
- very time consuming
Cohort Sequential Research Design
Several age cohorts are studied longitudinally
Population
All cases or observations of interest in a given study
Sample
subset of cases or observation from a population
Quantitative Analyses
mathematical stats to interpret data
Qualitative Analyses
identifying, describing different types of behaviours, outcomes etc.
Measures of central tendency
Typical values or centre of distribution scores
set organized from lowest to highest or vice versa
Mode
Median
Mean * most common, downfall is outliers
Measures of Dispersion
Range
Variance
standard Deviation
Type 1 error
False alarm proclaiming study is comparable to natural world when it is not (innocent, but verdict is guilty)
Type 2 error
A missed opportunity to report and discover correlation between variables(Guilty but verdict is innocent)
Descriptive Stats
Organize and summarize a set of data
Inferential Stats
Draw conclusions about a population based on data from a sample
