Research Methods Flashcards
What are the 3 main goals of the scientific approach?
- Describe behaviour and mental processes
- Make accurate predictions about these processes
- Understand how and why these processes occur
What are the 5 steps of the scientific method?
- Identify question of interest
- Hypothesise
- Test hypothesis through research
- Analyse data, draw tentative conclusions, and report findings
- Build a body of knowledge, ask further questions, conduct more research, and test theories
What are the 4 characteristics of a good theory?
- Organises information
- Testable: generates new hypothesis
- Supported by new research
- Simple is better
What term is used to describe a system of statements that explain observations?
Theory
What are the 4 attributes of empirical research?
- Theoretical framework
- Standardised procedure
- Generalisability
- Objective measurement
Any phenomenon that can take on more than one value is called a…
Variable
What is the difference between a continuous variable and categorical variable?
Continuous: has a continuum of possible values and varies across this
Categorical: can only take on fixed values
What are the 6 ways to define and measure variables?
- Self-report measures
- Reports made by others
- Measurement of overt behaviours
- Archival methods
- Psychological tests
- Physiological measures
What are the 3 types of reliability in research?
- Test-retest reliability
- Internal consistency: different items that measure the same variable should produce similar answers
- Inter-rater reliability: two testers who rate the same person on the same variable should give similar ratings
What are the 2 types of sampling?
- Random: every member of the population has an equal probability of being chosen
- Stratified random sampling: population is divided into sub-groups - participants chosen to correspond with population percentages
What are the 3 types of mixed-method research?
Descriptive, correlational, and experimental
The … variable is manipulated by the experimenter, and the … variable is measured by the experimenter.
Independent
Dependent
What does the between-group design measure?
The differences on a given variable between groups.
The group that receives a zero level of the independent variable is called…
Control group
Which experiment design exposes every participant to each variation of a given variable?
Within-group design
When two variables are interconnected, we cannot determine which one has influenced a dependent variable. This is called…
Confounding variables
What are the 3 main threats to internal validity?
- Confounding variables
- Placebo effect
- Experimenter expectancy effect
Case studies, naturalistic observation, and surveys are methods of which type of research?
Descriptive research
What are the 3 main limitations of case studies?
- Cannot determine cause-effect relationship
- Difficult to generalise due to small sample
- Researcher bias
What are the 2 main limitations of naturalistic observation?
- Cannot establish causal relationship
- Observation can alter behaviour
What are the 4 main limitations of survey research?
- Unrepresentative samples produce distorted results
- Cannot indicate causation
- Social desirability bias
- Wording of questions
What does the correlational coefficient indicate?
The direction and strength of the relation ship between two variables. (r) value ranges from -1 to 1.
In correlational coefficients, what does 1, 0, and -1 mean?
1 is a perfect positive relationship: as one thing increases, the other also increases
0 is no relationship: changes in one thing don’t affect the other
-1 is a perfect negative relationship: as one thing increases, the other decreases
Which research method shows the correlation between two variables, including the direction and strength of relationship?
Scatterplot
