Chapter 3 Developing Ideas for Research in Psychology

Question 1

Varieties of Psych Research - Classifying Studies

Answer 1

(a) basic or applied research,
(b) laboratory or field research, and
(c) quantitative or qualitative research.

Question 2

Basic Research

Answer 2

Research with the goal of describing, predicting, and explaining fundamental principles of behaviour

• designed to understand fundamental psychological phenomena (e.g., stimulus factors affecting selective attention)
• not directly trying to find the solution to real world
• foundation for applied research

Question 3

Applied Research

Answer 3

Research with the goal of trying to solve an immediate real‐life problem.
-directly answer real-world problems

Question 4

Translational Research

Answer 4

researchers have labelled the merging of basic and applied research as translational research
-Applied research is a research methodology that creates practical solutions for specific problems while basic research is an approach to research that seeks to expand knowledge in a field of study. This means that applied research is solution-driven while basic research is knowledge-specific.

Question 5

Laboratory Research

Answer 5

Research that occurs within the controlled confines of the scientific laboratory. allows the researcher greater control; conditions of the study can be specified more precisely, and participants can be selected and placed in the different conditions of the study more systematically.

• often basic research
• greater control

Question 6

Field Research

Answer 6

Research that occurs in any location other than a scientific laboratory. the environment more closely matches the situations we encounter in daily living.

• often applied research
• more realistic
• Field research can provide support for findings from lab research.

Question 7

Mundane Realism

Answer 7

refers to how closely a study mirrors real‐life experiences.

Question 8

Experimental Realism

Answer 8

concerns the extent to which a research study (whether in the laboratory or in the field) “has an impact on the subjects, forces them to take the matter seriously, and involves them in the procedures”

Question 9

Field VS Lab Research

Answer 9

Proximity to everyday life is the strength of field research, but there are other reasons for conducting research away from the lab. First, conditions in the field often cannot be duplicated in a laboratory., Such conditions can hardly be created in a laboratory, if for no other reason than an IRB almost certainly would not allow it. A second reason to do field research is to confirm the findings of laboratory studies and perhaps to correct misconceptions or oversimplifications that might be derived from the safe confines of a laboratory. A third reason is to make discoveries that could result in an immediate difference in the lives of the people being studied. Fourth, although field research is ordinarily associated with applied research, it is also a good setting in which to do basic research.

• One last point about the decision on where to locate a study concerns ethics.
• laboratory research, it is relatively easy to stick closely to the ethics code. In the field, however, it is difficult, and usually impossible, to provide informed consent and debriefing;

Question 10

Random Assignment

Answer 10

Random assignment is the process by which researchers select individuals from their total sample to participate in a specific condition or group, such that each participant has a specifiable probability of being assigned to each of the groups or conditions

Question 11

Confederate

Answer 11

someone who appears to be part of the normal environment but is actually part of the study.

Question 12

Manipulation Check

Answer 12

In the debriefing, a procedure to determine if subjects were aware of a deception experiment’s true purpose; also a procedure that determines if systematic manipulations have the intended effect on participants.

Question 13

Pilot Study

Answer 13

During the initial stages of research, it is common for some data to be collected; problems spotted in this trial stage enable the researcher to refine the procedures and prevent the full‐scale study from being flawed methodologically

Question 14

Quantitative Research

Answer 14

the data are collected and presented in the form of numbers—average scores for different groups on some task, percentages of people who do one thing or another, graphs and tables of data, and so on

• Most research in psychology is quantitative in nature.
• Includes quantitative data and statistical analysis (reporting means/variance)

Question 15

Qualitative Research

Answer 15

is not easily classified, but it often includes studies that collect interview information, either from individuals or groups; it sometimes involves detailed case studies; or it might involve carefully designed observational studies
-Includes narrative descriptions, content analyses, interviews -not as much control and be careful of biases and description that arent typical of the group being observed

Question 16

Empirical Questions

Answer 16

They have two important features: They must be answerable with data, qualitative and/or quantitative, and their terms must be precisely defined.

• questions must be refined. This task can be referred to as operationalizing the terms in the question. Precisely defined terms are the second feature of an empirical question.
• Can be answered with data
• Terms precisely defined how do we do this, we create = operational definitions
• Empirical questions may evolve out of (a) everyday observations of behaviour, (b) the need to solve a practical problem, (c) attempts to support or refute a theory, or (d) unanswered questions from a study just completed.

Question 17

Operationism and Operational Definitions

Answer 17

Operationism - Philosophy of science approach, proposed by Bridgman, holding that all scientific concepts should be defined in terms of a set of operations to be performed.
Operational definitions - A definition of a concept or variable in terms of precisely described operations, measures, or procedures.
-One important outcome of the precision resulting from operational definitions is that it allows experiments to be repeated. Replication, an important feature of any science

Question 18

Converging Operations

Answer 18

converging operations - Occurs when the results of several studies, each employing slightly different operational definitions, nonetheless converge on the same general conclusion.

Question 19

Coming up with an Empirical Question (ways)

Answer 19

1 way Observing behaviour
2 way Applied problem
3 way Theory testing – conduct a study
4 way New question generated from past research

Question 20

1-way Obersving Behaviour and Serendipity

Answer 20

• One famous historical example of observations leading to research comes from the social psychological research on helping behavior, which developed out of several well‐publicized cases of failure to help. Most notable among them was the Kitty Genovese case in 1964, in which a woman was attacked several times and eventually murdered in New York City, in full view of at least 38 witnesses in nearby apartments, none of whom even made an anonymous call to police = they called this phenomenon the bystander effect. = they often assume someone else will help if other people are around
• Serendipitous observations can also lead to research. Serendipity, or discovering something while looking for something else entirely, has been a source of numerous important events in the history of science = The process of making an accidental discovery; finding X when searching for Y.

Question 21

3-way Developing Research from Theory and Theory

Answer 21

Theory = A set of statements that summarizes and organizes existing information about a phenomenon provides an explanation for it and serves as a basis for making predictions to be tested empirically.

• make a theory - take your observations then, propose a theory, make a prediction on that theory, then test that theory.
• Empirical testing is a research method that employs direct and indirect observation and experience.
• is a set of logically consistent statements about some phenomenon that (a) best summarizes existing empirical knowledge of the phenomenon, (b) organizes this knowledge in the form of precise statements of relationships among variables (i.e., laws), (c) proposes an explanation for the phenomenon, and (d) serves as the basis for making predictions. These predictions are then tested with research.
• theory is more focused on a specific aspect of behaviour.
• Theories also differ in the level of precision

Question 22

Example Theory and Construct - Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 22

. In social psychology, for instance, cognitive dissonance theory concerns decision-making and how people resolve inconsistencies; in abnormal psychology, learned helplessness theory attempts to account for psychological depression; in developmental psychology, the processing‐speed theory focuses on age‐related declines in cognitive processing.

• The essence of the theory is the proposal that whenever people hold two opposing cognitions at the same time, a state of discomfort, called cognitive dissonance, is created. Cognitive dissonance is an example of what psychologists refer to as a construct.
• A construct is a hypothetical factor that is not observed directly; its existence is inferred from certain behaviours and assumed to follow from certain circumstances. Hence, cognitive dissonance is assumed to exist following circumstances of cognitive inconsistency and presumably leads to certain predictable behaviours.
• a construct (e.g., cognitive dissonance) is a hypothetical factor developed as part of a theory to help explain a phenomenon (e.g., decision making) or created as a shorthand term for a cluster of related behaviors (e.g., self‐esteem). Constructs are never observed directly, so we develop operational definitions for them as a way of investigating them empirically, and then develop measures for them
• No theory is ever complete and the reciprocal relationship between theory and research and demonstrates an important attribute of a good theory: its ability to make predictions that lead to new research

Question 23

Theory and Research Relationship - Deduction & Induction

Answer 23

• Deduction = Reasoning from the general to the specific; in science, used when deriving research hypotheses from theories.
• deduction takes the form of the scientist’s reasoning that if the theory is correct, then a specific research outcome can be predicted and should occur with some probability greater than chance. The prediction about outcomes that are derived this way is called a hypothesis. Hypotheses lead to the design of a study, which produces results as predicted or fails to produce them.
• Hypothesis = An educated guess about a relationship between variables that are then tested empirically.
• that inductive support for the theory increases when individual studies keep producing the results as predicted from the theory. Induction is the logical process of reasoning from specific events (the results of individual research studies) to the general (the theory).
• Induction = Reasoning from the specific to the general; in science, when the results of research studies are used to support or refute a theory.
• observation-induction-theory-deduction-hypothesis-experiment (either confirmed data or disconfirmed data)
• confirmed data-induction-theory supported
• disconfirmed data-theory false
• it takes many negative outcomes to confirm a theory

Question 24

Attributes of Good Theories - Productivity, Falsification, and Parsimony

Answer 24

Productivity = With reference to theory, the amount of research generated to test a theory; theories that lead to a great deal of research are considered productive.
Falsification = Research strategy, advocated by Popper, that emphasizes putting theories to the test by trying to disprove or falsify them.
Parsimonious = Describing a theory that includes the minimum number of constructs and min assumptions in order to explain and predict some phenomenon adequately.
-includes min amount of constructs and min number of assumptions – basically simple explanation the better
- If two theories are equal in every way except that one is more parsimonious, then the simpler one is generally preferred. A good theory is a simple theory that can explain a lot of detail ex evolution theory

Question 25

Programs of Research and The Research Team

Answer 25

Programs of research - Series of interrelated studies in which the outcome of one study leads naturally to another.
The research team (apprenticeship model) - A group of researchers (professors and students) working on the same research problem.

Question 26

Replication (hint 2)

Answer 26

replication = refers to a study that duplicates some or all of the procedures of a prior study

• direct replication = is an attempted reproduction of a study’s results testing the same type of sample and using the exact procedures and statistical analyses as the original study. It is an attempted exact replication of a prior study, usually done by a separate research team.
• conceptual replication = parts of the procedures of a prior study are purposely changed in order to test predictions similar to those in the original study.

Question 27

Creative Thinking

Answer 27

A process of making an innovative connection between seemingly unrelated ideas or events