Psych - Chapter 2 Flashcards
What is basic research for?
It answers questions about behaviour
What is applied research for?
It investigates issues for everyday life, and provides solutions to everyday problems.
True or false. Basic and applied research inform each other.
True. Advances in science occur more rapidly.
What is a theory?
Integrated set of principles that explains and predicts many, but not all, observed relationships within a domain of inquiry.
What is stage of theory of cognitive development? (Piaget)
States that children pas through a series of cognitive stages as they grow, each which must be mastered in succession before movement to the next cognitive stage can occur.
What does falsifiable mean?
Variables of interest can be adequately measured and the relationships between variables that are predicted can be shown through research to be incorrect.
Hypothesis
A general statement about relationships between variables–often generated from theories.
Operational definition
The measurement properties of a variable. They show exactly what is being measured (ie. self-reported number of hours of sleep).
Descriptive research
Provides a snapshot of current state of affairs
Correlational research & Correlational coefficient
Correlational research designs look for associations between variables–eg. height and weight.
Statistic that measures this association is the correlational coefficient.
Correlational coefficient can be either negative or positive, and range from -1.0 through 0 to 1.0
Experimental research
Assess cause and effect
Case studies
Descriptive records of one or more individual’s experiences and behaviour. Small number of individuals.
Useful when only a small amount of research is done on a topic.
Researchers can only speculate about cause and effect, and must do so with great caution.
Survey
Interview or written questionnaire to get a picture of behaviour of a sample of people of interest.
Sample
People chosen to participate in the research selected to be representative of all the people that the researcher wishes to know about. Known as population.
Representative sample
Must reflect Canada’s demographic make-up in terms of age, sex, gender orientation, socioeconomic status, ethnicity……
Generalizability
Research based on unrepresentative samples is limited in generalizability since it will not apply to anyone who was not represented in the sample.
WEIRD
Western
Educated
Industrialized
Rich
Democratic
These people have been over-represented in psych research in the past
Pearson correlational coefficient
r=.54 positive relationship
r=-.30 negative relationship
Correlations of 0 indicate no relationship between variables.
Positive correlation coefficients
In each case of correlations, people who score higher, or lower, on one of the variables also tend to score higher, or lower, on the other variable.
Negative correlation
Occur when people score high on one variable, and low on the other.
Negative linear line on scatter plot.
Linear relationship
When the association between the variables on the scatterplot can be easily approximated with a straight line.
Correlational research is limited in this design because we do not know what causes what.
Third variable
One that is not part of the research hypothesis, but that causes both the observed variables and, thus, the correlation between them.
Positive correlation between dark chocolate consumption and health
x=those who consume dark chocolate are concerned about their longevity
y=those who are concerned about their health exercise regularly
c=high alcohol consumption
Independent variable (aka experimental manipulation)
Variable manipulated by researchers so that there is more than one condition.
Dependent variable
Outcome or score on the measure of interest that is dependent on the actions of the independent variable.
Double-blind
Neither the experimenter, nor the participants know which condition any participant is in during the experiment.
Single-blind
A study in which the experimenter does not know which condition each participant is in during the experiment, so that they cannot systematically treat one group differently.
Initial equivalence
Between conditions of the experiment that are made possible by using random assignment to conditions.
Confounding variable
A variable that has slipped unwanted into the research and potentially caused the results, and not the independent variable.
Quasi-experimental
The inability to randomly assign the participants to condition results in uncertainty of cause and effect.
- Men and women differ in some ability, it could be biology that is the cause. It is equally likely that it could be a societal experience of being male or female that is responsible.
Correlational research example….
Independent variable - the participant will attend psychotherapy for two sessions per week for a 6 month period.
Dependent variable - the participant will show an increase in emotional stability and overall happiness over the course of the 6 month period.
Mean (aka central tendency)
The average. Sum of all scores and then divide by the number of participants.
Median
Score in the centre of the distribution.
Used as an alternative measure of central tendency when distributions are not symmetrical.
Mode
The value that occurs most frequently in distribution.
Dispersion
The extent to which the scores are all tightly clustered around the central tendency.
Range
Highest score minus the lowest score.
Standard deviation
Most commonly used measure of variability around the mean.
Significance test
The researcher’s estimate of how likely it is that their results were simply the result of chance.
Less than 5% probability - result is considered to be real and to generalize the population.
More than 5% probability - result is considered to be a non-significant result. Likely due to chance and not generalized to population.
Reported as p values that provide info about presence and effect.
p<.05 = probability of being caused by chance less than 5%
p>0.5 = probability of being caused by chance more than 5%. The difference is real.
Deception in research
Occurs when research participants are not made fully aware about the nature of the project before participating in it.
