Psych Unit 3 Flashcards
Critical Thinking Skills
- discussion exercises are good for this
- helps us critique research
we want to be able to evaluate research and see if it’s high quality or low quality
Self-Reports
when participants are asked a question about their sexual behavior
- more quantitative
ex: at what age did you begin masturbating?
ex: did you use a condom the first time you had sex?
ex: the introductory survey we took the first class
Dr. Jerald’s Research
she looked at how stereotypes influence black women
results:
- the women who were more aware of their stereotype monitored their sexual behavior more
Behavioral Measures
any direct observation – the scientist directly observes the behavior
eye-tracking = showing participants sexual images and tracking what their eye is looking at in the photo
police reports = what kinds of sexual crimes get reported and why?
genital measures = lubrication, erection speed
- measures of hormones using blood samples
- uses fMRI and MRI scans to see what parts of the brain light up in response to sexual stimuli
Implicit Measures
assessments that attempt to measure implicit associations that participants may not be aware of
ex: the Implicit Association Test – used to see if people have biases (the short time their given to answer allows them to reveal their biases)
Population
a group of people the researcher wants to study and make inferences about
Sample
a part of that population that is used to make generalizations
ex: if you want to know about every Black woman in the US – you would take a sample because it would be impossible to get every single one’s response
Random Sample
each member of the population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate
Probability Sample
each member of the population has a known probability of being included in the sample
Convenience Sample
a sample that is based on convenience of recruiting the participants rather than trying to reflect an accurate proportion of the true population
ex: the research study we did for extra credit — the sample wasn’t random (they didn’t make any effort to randomize the sample)
ex: when therapist sends patients to the reserach study
Best Samples???
***We want to aim for random samples or probability samples because they create the most representative sample
Problem of Refusal Or Nonresponse
when people don’t respond to participating in the study
- leads to volunteer bias
ex: the ppl who volunteer for the sex study are prob not the most avg or representative person - volunteers for sexual studies are more permissive and experienced
- hard to get around this for sex research (lot of sex research is limited)
Purposeful Distortion
intentionally giving self-reports that are distortions of reality
ex: someone responding to a survey saying they used a bag as a condom
Memory Issues with self-report
people often have a hard time remembering accurate information
ex: how much time do you spend on social media
Difficults with Estimating
people don’t always count the number of times they do something and so many estimate - these can be based on other social factors
ex: men tend to round up when describing their number of sexual partners, whereas women tend to give an exact number (this is because men feel pressured from society to have sex with a lot of women)
Research Bias
researchers may ask about identities or experiences in different ways or in ways that reflect their own biases/approaches
ex: when asking about sexual orientation/identity a research could ask it in a multiple choice form, open-ended form
- open ended is better bc it gives the participant more room to answer
- asking 2 questions at once is hard because the participant might not be answering the question they think they are
ex: what is your gender and sexual orientation
Ways to make Self Report Better
- increase anonymity
- online responding
- ex: if someone is taking a survey about sex in person they might distort
Research Ethics
Informed Consent:
- participants have to the right to be informed before participating of what they will be asked to do in the study
protection from harm:
- minimize stress
- protect anonymity
Justice:
- costs and benefit of research should be equal
cost-benefit analysis:
- are ppl being harmed in the research and is the research important enough (does benefit outwiegh the cost)
Kinsey Research
- a biologist who then started studying sexuality
- he saw there was a lack of research on human sexual behavior
- started interviewing ppl
- he collected sexual histories from ppl using a questionaire
- he published the Kinsey Report – sexuality on men and women
- founded the Kinsey Institute
- now the institute has become attacked by politicians
National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior
developed at the Kinsey Institute
- they use probability sample – random digit dialing and sampling of residential address
- they had a wide age range
- it was ethically diverse
Media Content Analysis
- set of procedures to make valid inferences
ex: you make an inference of a TikTok - you want to sample people, videos, hashtags
- coder scheme = what are you looking at?
- need coder interreliability – the clips that one person is noting has to be consistent with what the other ppl are saying
Quantitative
Assign numbers to attributes of people
ex: attitudes about abortion on a scale of 1-10
Qualitative
gain an in-depth understanding of behavior
- gives us a rich description
- often based in-depth interviews, focus groups
- data are words not numbers
- use small samples (hard to sample a lot of people bc data is usually in-depth
- little concern abt random sampling
Ethnography
- observing and then describing a human society – most cultural anthro research
