Lecture 1

Question 1

What are the 4 steps of Developing psychological research questions?

Answer 1

Define a population of interest that you want to generalize your research to.
Reflect on a question
Identify the core psychological constructs of your question
Think of a good measure that quantifies the constructs (operationalization)

Question 2

Define psychological constructs

Answer 2

the concepts we study prior to operationalization

Question 3

Define Psychological measures

Answer 3

instruments devised to quantify the construct

Question 4

Define Operationalization

Answer 4

the process of identifing measures you will use to reflect a construct

Provides an objective measure of constructs; they provide data for analysis

Question 5

What are the 2 types of validity?

Answer 5

Construct validity: the degree to which a measure captures the construct
Content validity: the degree to which a measure captures all aspects of a construct

Question 6

Validity of self report and behavioural measures

Answer 6

Self report has multiple sources of potential biases (social desirability bias, memory recall bias, cultural differences)
Behavioral measures also have potential biases (observer bias, influence of observer on behaviour)

Question 7

What are the two types of reliabilty?

Answer 7

Test-retest reliability: the consistency to which a measure captures the construct over time
Inter-rater reliability: the consistency between different raters or observers when they independently evaluate or score the same phenomenon, behavior, or data

Reliability of self reports can be strong with detailed questions. Reliability of brain imaging was found to be poor.