CHAPTER 3: Nonexperimental Designs Flashcards
do not create levels of an independent variable nor randomly assign subject to these levels
- Usually conducted in real-world setting.
Nonexperimental Approaches
The degree to which a research design allows us to make causal statements.
- Laboratory experiments are potentially high in internal validity.
- An experiment has high internal validity when we can demonstrate that only the antecedent conditions are responsible for group differences in behavior.
- Allows us to draw cause-and-effect conclusions.
Internal Validity
generalizability or applicability to people and situations outside the research setting.
- Field methods, social experiments
- Nonexperimental designs may have greater external validity
External Validity
high degree in manipulation
Experiments
low degree in manipulation
Non Experiments
the extent to which researcher constraints or limits the responses a subject may contribute to the data.
The degree of imposition of units
stimulus that cues an organism to perform a learned behavior.
Antecedent
the description of an individual’s immediate experience.
- Using personal experience as a source of data.
- Low in manipulation of antecedent conditions and low in imposition of units.
- Can describe but not explain behavior.
Phenomenology
known early phenomenologist
William James
– descriptive record of a single individual’s experiences, behaviors, or both, that are kept by an outside observer.
- may also be applied to nonclinical issues such as social trends and adult morale
Case Study
5 major purposes of case studies:
- Source of inferences, hypotheses, and theories
- Source of developing therapy techniques
- Allow the study of rare phenomena
- Provide exceptions, counter instances, to accepted ideas, theories, or practices
- Have persuasive and motivational value
extension of the evaluative case study.
- researchers examine differences between deviant and normal individuals to identify etiological factors
Deviant case analysis
recollections of past events that are collected in the present.
- Memories are altered or reconstructed
Retrospective Data
nonexperimental studies conducted in the field or real-life settings.
- Antecedent conditions are not manipulated.
Field Studies
examines subjects’ spontaneous behavior in their actual (natural) environments and may obtain more representative behavior than experiments.
Naturalistic Observation
subjects alter their behavior when they know that they are being observed.
Reactivity
use pre rearranged strategy for recording observations in which each observation is recorded using specific rules and guidelines so that observations are more objective.
Systematic Observation
behavioral indicators that can be observed without the subject’s knowledge.
Unobtrusive Measures
involves field observation in which the researcher is part of the studied group.
- The researcher does not interact with research
subjects to avoid reactivity
- Pretending to be a group member
Participant-Observer Study
descriptive research method in which already existing records are reexamined for a new purpose.
Archival Study
- relies on words rather than numbers for the data being collected.
- Focuses on self-reports, personal narratives, expression of ideas, memories, feelings, and thoughts.
Qualitative Research
set of attitudes, values, beliefs, methods, and procedures that are generally accepted within a particular discipline at a point in time.
Paradigm
contemporary phenomenology; might rely on the researcher’s own experiences or on experiential data provided by other sources.
Empirical Phenomenology
design of inquiry coming from anthropology and sociology in which the researcher studies the shared patterns of behaviors, language, and actions of an intact cultural group in a natural setting over a prolonged period of time.
Ethnography
