Research Flashcards
Describe the SCIENTIST-PRACTITIONER model
Scientific research is used to inform practice and practice is investigated through scientific research
Describe the 5 the non-scientific ways of knowing.
Tenacity - superstition or habit
Intuition - not based on reasoning or inference. Eg. a gut feeling
Authority - perceived experts or respected sources
Rationalism - reasoning and inference based on what you think you already know plus new information
Experience/Empiricism - learning by doing/seeing/feeling, observing phenomena. This is susceptible to the availability heuristic
What is the AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC?
Relying on information that is easy to recall because it is readily available or somehow unusual and therefore memorable
What are the 8 aspects of GOOD scientific research?
- Informed by the work of others
- Replicable
- Generaliseable to other settings
- Based on logical rationale and theory
- Doable
- generates NEW questions
- Incremental
- is an apolitical activity (as much as it can be)
What is FALSIFICATION?
The act of showing a hypothesis to be false. A good hypothesis/research question should be able to be shown to be false (falsified).
What are 4 goals of the scientific method?
Describe
Predict
Explain
Determine cause
What are the two approaches to research in psychology?
Basic and Applied research
What are 4 aspects of BASIC RESEARCH?
Attempts to answer fundamental questions on how the world works. Eg. Cognition, emotion, motivation, personality etc
Arises from curiosity, there isn’t a specific application in mind
High levels of control
Emphasis on supporting or refuting theories
What are 2 aspects of APPLIED RESEARCH?
Address practical problems and potential solutions
Less control as they take place on the real world
What does a capital N stand for?
Total participants in a study
What does a lowercase, italicised ‘n’ stand for?
Total participants in group
List the 4 types of NON EXPERIMENTAL research design
Descriptive
Historical
Qualitative
Correlational
What is DESCRIPTIVE research?
It describes or aims to get an accurate picture of a particular situation without interventions (“as it stands”)
It serves as a base for future studies
What is HISTORICAL research?
Utilities pervious research and data already collected to investigate a phenomena
What is QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?
Looks at non-quantitative results.
Is interested in behaviour in larger contexts such as social, cultural and political
What is CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH?
Investigated relationships between selected variables
Helps to predict another event
What is a NEGATIVE CORRELATION?
When one variable increases the other decreases.
The closer the correlation co-efficient (r) is to -1 the stronger the negative correlation
What is a POSITIVE CORRELATION?
As one variable increases so does the other.
The closer the correlation co-efficient (r) is to 1, the stronger the positive correlation
What are the 3 features of a TRUE EXPERIMENT?
Participants are able to be RANDOMLY assigned to groups
The independent variable (or ‘treatment’) is controlled by the researcher
There is control over potential causes of behaviour (extraneous variables?)
What are the 2 features of a QUASI EXPERIMENT?
Participants cannot be randomly assigned to groups. The groups are naturally occurring.
They are useful when you cannot control the variable
What is an INDEPENDENT VARIABLE?
x
What is a DEPENDENT VARIABLE?
x
What is a CONTROLLED VARIABLE?
X
What is an EXTRANEOUS VARIABLE?
x
What is a MODERATOR VARIABLE?
x
What is a MEDIATOR VARIABLE?
x
Describe a BETWEEN SUBJECTS research design
aka Independent Samples
Each group is subject to only one level of each independent variable
Eg. placebo VS treatment
Describe a WITHIN SUBJECTS research design
aka Repeated Measures
All participants are subjected to both levels of the independent variable (eg. placebo & treatment)
This occurs over time
What is a NULL HYPOTHESIS and why is it important?
H(0)
That there is no relationship between the variables you are investigating
What is a HYPOTHESIS and what are it’s 6 features?
H(A) or H(1)
If/then statements of what you expect to see based on your preliminary research and literature review (theoretical framework)
- Falsifiable
- Brief
- Statement
- Past Tense
- Describe expected relationship
- can be directional or non-directional
What is the importance of STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE?
It allows us to know how likely our results are to be showing effects due to a relationship between variables rather than chance
What is a P VALUE?
X
What is a POPULATION?
Everyone in a group that exists
The collection of units you want to generalise your research findings to
What is a SAMPLE?
Everyone in a group that has been studied
A smaller selection of observations from the population that is used to infer characteristics about the population
What is RANDOM SAMPLING?
Where you have access to the whole population and are able to select participants at random
NOT required for a true scientific experiment
(But is better practice)
What is RANDOM ALLOCATION?
Where participants in a study/sample are able to be randomly assigned to groups/levels of variables in the study.
The groups are not naturally occurring (eg disease/no disease, male/female etc)
IS required for a true scientific experiment
