Chapter 2: Research Methods Flashcards
Blind
Unaware of whether one is in the control or experimental group.
Experimenter Expectancy Effect
A phenomenon in which researchers’ hypotheses lead them to unintentionally bias the outcome of a study.
Double-Blind
When neither researchers nor participants are aware of who’s in the experimental or control group.
Illusory Correlation
A perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists.
Experiment
A research design characterized by random assignment of participants to conditions and manipulation of an independent variable.
Random Assignment
Randomly sorting participants into two groups; experimental and control.
Experimental Group
The group of participants, in an experiment, that receive the manipulation.
Control Group
The group of participants, in an experiment, that doesn’t receive the manipulation.
Between-Subjects Design
In an experiment, researchers assign different groups to the control or experimental condition.
Within-Subject Design
In an experiment, each participant acts as his or her own control.
Independent Variable
The variable that an experimenter manipulates.
Dependent Variable
The variable that an experimenter measures to see whether the manipulation has an effect.
Operational Definition
A working definition of what a researcher is measuring.
Demand Characteristics
Cues that participants pick up from a study that allow them to generate guesses regarding the researcher’s hypotheses.
Informed Consent
Researchers must inform research participants of what is involved in a study before asking them to participate.
Statistics
The application of mathematics to describing and analyzing data.
Descriptive Statistics
Numerical characterizations that describe data.
Heuristic
A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world.
Naturalistic Observation
Watching behaviour in real-world settings without trying to manipulate the situation.
External Validity
The extent to which we can generalize findings to real-world settings.
Internal Validity
The extent to which we can draw cause-and-effect inferences from a study.
Case Study
A research design that examines one person or a small number of people in depth, often over an extended time period.
Existence Proof
A demonstration that a given psychological phenomenon can occur.
Random Selection
A procedure that ensures that every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate.
Placebo Effect
An improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement.
Reliability
The consistency of measurement.
Validity
The extent to which a measure assesses what it purports to measure.
Response Set
A tendency of research participants to distort their responses to questionnaire items.
Correlational Design
A research design that examines the extent to which two variables are associated.
Scatterplot
A grouping of points on a two-dimensional graph in which each dot represents a single person’s data.
Mode
The most frequent score in a data set.
Varaibility
The measure of how loosely or tightly bunched scores are.
Central Tendency
The measure of the “central” scores in a data set, or where the group tends to cluster.
Mean
The average.
Median
The middle score in a data set.
Range
The difference between the highest and the lowest scores.
Standard Deviation
The measure of variability that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean.
Inferential Statistics
Mathematical methods that allow us to determine whether we can generalize findings from our sample to the full population.
Parapsychologists
Investigators who study ESP and related psychic phenomena.
