Chapter 2 to page 25 Flashcards
THE MOTIVATION TO CONDUCT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH COMES FROM A
NATURAL CURIOSITY ABOUT THE WORLD
Curiosity is expressed in the form of
questions
research question
is the first and most general step in designing and conducting a research investigation
A good research question must be specific so that it can be
answered with a research project.
hypothesis
is a tentative answer to a research question. It can be thought of as one of the possible answers to a research question
Once a hypothesis is proposed, data must be
data must be gathered and evaluated in terms of whether the evidence is consistent or inconsistent with the hypothesis.
Once the hypothesis is stated, the researcher can design a study to
test it
Once the study is designed, the researcher can make a specific prediction about the
outcome of the study
prediction
follows directly from a hypothesis, is directly testable, and includes specific variables and methodologies.
If a prediction is confirmed by the results of the study, the hypothesis is supported. If the prediction is not
confirmed, the researcher will either reject the hypothesis or conduct further research using different methods to study the hypothesis.
It is important to note that when the results of a study confirm a prediction, the hypothesis is only supported, not proven. Researchers study the same hypothesis using a variety of methods, and each time this hypothesis is supported by a research study, we become more confident that the hypothesis is correct.
In order from general to specific
Research question -> Hypothesis -> Prediction
It is not easy to say where good ideas come from. Many people are capable of coming up with worthwhile ideas but find it difficult to
verbalize the process by which they are generated
common sense
All of these:
1) the things we all believe to be true
2) One source of ideas/body of knowledge that can be tested
Testing a commonsense idea can be valuable because such notions do not always turn out to be correct, or
research may show that the real world is much more
complicated than our commonsense ideas would have it.
Conducting research to test commonsense ideas often forces us to go
go beyond a commonsense theory of behavior.
Research is also stimulated by practical problems that can have
immediate applications
Observations of personal and social events can provide
many ideas for research. The curiosity sparked by your
observations and experiences can lead you to ask questions about all sorts of phenomena. In fact, this type of curiosity is what drives many students to engage in their first research project.
Winograd and Soloway’s research demonstrated that people are likely to forget where something is placed
when two conditions are present
1) The location where the object is placed is judged to be highly memorable
2) the location is considered a very unlikely place for the object.
Thus, although it may seem to be a good
idea at the time, storing something in an unusual place is generally not a good idea.
five sources of ideas:
common sense, observation of the world around us, theories, past research, and practical problems.
theory
A systematic, coherent, and logical set of ideas about a particular topic or phenomenon
Theories serve two important functions
1) organize and explain a variety of specific facts or descriptions of behavior. Such facts and
descriptions are not very meaningful by themselves, and so theories are needed to impose a framework on
them. This framework makes the world more comprehensible by providing a few abstract concepts around which we can organize and explain a variety of behaviors.
2) generate new knowledge by focusing our thinking so that we notice new aspects of
behavior—theories guide our observations of the world. The theory generates hypotheses about behavior, and the researcher conducts studies to test the hypotheses. If the studies confirm the hypotheses, the theory is supported. As more and more evidence accumulates that is consistent with the theory, we become more confident that the theory is correct.
Sometimes people describe a theory as “just an idea” that may or may not be true. We need to separate this
use of the term—which implies that a theory is essentially the same as a hypothesis—from the scientific meaning of theory. A scientific theory consists of
much more than a simple “idea.” A scientific theory is
grounded in actual data from prior research as well as numerous hypotheses that are consistent with the
theory.
