Intro to Research Methods Flashcards
What are the challenges with personal experience as a source of information?
Bias
Bias
Partiality; an inclination or predisposition for or against something; systematic error arising during sampling, data collection, or data analysis
*Confirmation bias
*Availability bias
*Anchoring bias
*Misinterpretation
Common Decision Biases
Confirmation Bias, Availability Bias & Anchoring Bias
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to gather evidence that confirms pre-existing expectations, typically by emphasizing or pursuing supporting evidence while dismissing or failing to seem contradictory evidence
Availability Bias
The more available and relevant information there is, the more likely the event is judged to be. Use of this strategy may lead to errors of judgement when information is highly available in memory (eg; well publicized events such as plane crashes) or relatively unavailable (eg; less well publicized causes of death, as from diabetes) leads people to believe that those kinds of events are more/less probable than they are.
Anchoring Bias
the tendency, in forming perceptions or making quantitative judgements under conditions of uncertainty, to give excessive weight to the starting value (or anchor), based on the first received information or one’s initial judgement, and not to modify this anchor sufficiently in light of later information.
Scientific Method
A set of procedures, guidelines, assumptions, and attitudes required for the organized and systematic collection, interpretation, and verification of data and the discovery of reproducible evidence, enabling laws and principles to be stated or modified.
Empirical
Based on observation, direct, or indirect
Inductive
Use observations and data to formulate a theory, ground up.
Deductive
Test an existing theory, top down
Hypothesis
An empirically testable proposition about some fact, behavior, relationship, or the like, usually based on theory, that states an expected outcome resulting from specific conditions or assumptions.
***Predicted outcome of a single study
Theory
in the philosophy of science, a set of logically related explanatory hypothesis that are consistent with a body of empirical facts and that may suggest more empirical relationships.
***Description of a phenomenon based on multiple studies.
Experimental
*Manipulate IVs to observe DV changes
*Control/Exp Groups
*Random sampling and assignment
*Blind and double-blind
Non-Experimental
*Less variable control
*More descriptive, applied
*Ex: surveys, polls, interviews, case studies
*Correlation
Quantitative
*Measurements in numbers
*Advantages: standardization, reliability, easy to analyze statistically
*Often deductive: test existing theories, generalize from sample to population
*Larger, random samples, collected quickly
