research methods Flashcards
Experimental design
The different ways in which the testing of participants can be organised in relation to the experimental conditions
Independent groups design
Participants are allocated to different groups where each group represents one experimental condition
Repeated measures design
All participants take part in all conditions of the experiment
laboratory design
•special environment
•different variables can be carefully controlled
strengths
-high degree of control
-replication
limitations
-experimenter bias
(participants influenced by expectations)
-low ecological validity
(high degree of control, unlike real life)
field experiment
•natural environment
•variables still being well controlled
strengths
-naturalistic
-controlled IV
limitations
-Ethical considerations
(invasion of privacy)
-Loss of control
what are descriptive statistics?
The use of graphs, tables and summary statistics to identify trends and analyse sets of data
what is the measure of central tendency
The general term for any measure of the average value in a set of data
what is the mean?
Adding all values together
Divide by the number of values
what is the median?
The middle value in data in order from highest to lowest
what is the mode?
most frequently occurring value
what is bimodal?
when there are 2 modes
what is the measure of dispersion?
any measure of the spread or variation in a set of scores
what is the range
highest score minus lowest score
what is standard deviation?
tells us how much scores deviate from the mean
Calculate the difference between the means and each score
What is a variable?
Anything we can change
