Introduction to research methods Flashcards
What should conclusions be based on?
Evidence
What should evidence be?
- Empirical - info gathered from experience, observation and experimentation
- Objective: Info free from bias
What are the key challenges in Psychology?
- Much of what we’re interested in is unobservable or we can’t do experiments around it
- Is it possible to study human behaviour without being subjective?
What is Pseudoscience?
A claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested or otherwise lacks scientific status.
What’s the history of psychology as a science?
- Freud claimed his work was a science. But the Psychoanalysis movement was very much based on introspection and single case studies and this is very open to subjective bias
- As a result the behaviourist movement emerged and said that you could only study directly observable behaviour
- cognitive psychologists said that you can study the mind in a scientific way as long as you can make testable predictions
- Now these methods are coupled up with neuroscience to see what is happening in the brain when you are thinking ect.
What is Induction?
Evidence is gathered from multiple observations and then a conclusion is drawn for all future observations
What is falsifiability?
The principle that our theory must be able to be disproven:
- science starts with theories which are subject to scrutiny
- if the evidence contradicts our theory we formulate an alternative
- if the evidence supports our theory we regard it as an undefeated theory
What is Bayesianism?
- Beliefs come in degrees.
- The likelihood of future events can be expressed on the basis of past knowledge.
- Revise probability prediction when faced with evidence in support or against your theory.
- Provides a measure of a state of knowledge
For something to be a scientific question what must you be able to do?
- test it
- must be falisfiable
What’s the hypothetic-deductive method?
Observation/ Intuition -> theory -> hypotheses -> empirical test -> results
- if our hypotheses is not supported by our results we go on to refine or abandon our results
- If the hypotheses is proven we say our theory is ‘undefeated’
What are characteristics or good scientists?
- Uncertain: don’t presuppose knowledge of the human mind and behaviour
- Sceptical: acknowledge that a theory is supported by evidence is merely undefeated
- open-minded: accept that any theory may be correct until evidence refutes it
- Cautious: recognise that conclusions are not facts
- Ethical: recognise our responsibility to ensure that no one is harmed as a result of our research or practice as psychologists
What was the replication crisis and what did it lead to?
- A methodological crisis in which the results of studies were not reproducible when tested again.
- particularly affects social and medical sciences
- It led to open science and the recognition that it is important to practice science in a way that is less focused on the end result
What is open science?
- refers to a set of research practices to overcome the replication crisis
- things must be reproducible and replicable
- In order to assess this we need research practices and data to be transparent and accessible
What is reproducibility and replicability?
- Reproducibility: if we have the same data and perform the same analyses do we get the same results
- Replicability: If we repeat the experiment with the same methods do we get the same result
What is open access?
- unrestricted public access to research
- typically used in reference to published journal articles but anything can be made open access.
- Need to provide materials to enable others to generate the exact same results as those reported
