research methods Flashcards
between subjects design
participants are allocated to the control OR the experimental condition
pro: no order effects
con: doesn’t control for participant differences
within subjects design
each participants exposed to the control and experimental condition
pro: controls for participant differences
con: order effect
placebo effect
tendency of participant expectations to influence their behaviour
controlled for by: placebo, single blind procedure
non-standardised instructions & procedures
involves subjects receiving different instructions or conducting the experiment in a different context
individual participant differences
the control and experimental groups may contain significant individual differences
order effect
where the order that a task was completed has an unwanted effect on the DV
control technique: counterbalancing
experimenter effect
refers to the actions of the experimenter affecting the results of the experiment
control technique: double blind procedure
validity
refers to the extent to which an assessment tool actually measures what it is designed to measure
internal validity
how well the study has been conducted
external validity
how applicable the findings are beyond the study
random sampling
every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected
convenience sampling
selecting readily available participants without any attempt to make sample representative of the population of interest
stratified sampling
divides population into different strata, then selects a sample from each strata in the same proportion of the population of interest
mean
average
median
middle number
mode
most commonly occurring number
standard deviation
variance of scores, shows the spread of scores around the mean
repeatability
extent to which successive measurements or studies produce the SAME results when repeated under in IDENTICAL conditions
reproducibility
extent to which successive measurements or studies produce the SAME results when repeated under DIFFERENT conditions
allocation
how participants are assigned to control & experimental groups
control group
acts as a baseline comparison to determine whether the IV has affected the DV
extraneous variables
any variable outside the IV that may have an unwanted affect on the DV
confounding variables
unwanted variable that HAS had an affect on the DV