experimental design key terms

Question 1

what are order effects?

Answer 1

when the positioning or order of tasks influences the outcome, for example due to practice, boredom or fatigue.

Question 2

what are participant variables?

Answer 2

these are differences that occur between participants and may influence the results e.g. gender, fitness levels, personality type.

Question 3

what are demand characteristics?

Answer 3

occur when participants try to make sense of the research situation they are in and try to guess the purpose of the research then change their behaviour to show social desirability or demand characteristics.

Question 4

what is counterbalancing?

Answer 4

a way of trying to control for order effects in a repeated measures design e.g. half the participants do condition A followed by B and the other half do B followed by A.

Question 5

what is random allocation?

Answer 5

refers to how experimenters divide participants into each experimental condition, to reduce any bias in the distribution of participant characteristics.