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
Which is stronger: r = -.7 OR r =.3?
r = -.7 is stronger
What are the 4 main advantages of correlational research?
- Generalisation
- Generate ideas for further lab study
- Study variables that are not practical or ethical in the lab
- Allows researchers to make predictions
What are the 5 different methods in quantitative research?
- Experimental
- Descriptive case study
- Naturalistic observation
- Survey research
- Correlational
What is a frequency distribution in descriptive statistics?
A method of organising data to show how often participants received each of the possible scores.
What is the most common example of frequency distribution?
Histogram: a chart that plots the distribution of a numeric variable’s values as a series of bars.
What are the 3 measures of central tendency?
Mode: most frequently occurring score
Median: middle value in a set of numbers when arranged in order
Mean: arithmetic average/central point of a data set
What are the 2 measures of variability?
- Range
- Standard deviation
The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution is measured by…
Range
How much each score in a distribution differs from the mean is measured by…
Standard deviation
Bell shaped frequency distribution occurs when…
Scores of most participants fall in the middle and progressively fewer scores fall at the extreme.
What does p-value mean?
The probability of there not being a difference.
What does a low p-value (≤ 0.05) indicate about your results?
A low p-value suggests that your results are unlikely to happen by chance, meaning your findings are statistically significant.
When a low p-value appears, you should…
Reject the idea that there is no effect (null hypothesis)
When a high p-value appears, you should…
Keep the idea that there is no effect (null hypothesis)
What does a high p-value (> 0.05) indicate about your results?
Your results could easily happen by chance, meaning your findings are not statistically significant.
What is the Cohen’s d?
A measure used in statistics to indicate the size of the difference between two groups.
What does a Cohen’s d value of 0.2 indicate?
Small effect
What does a Cohen’s d value of 0.5 indicate?
Medium effect
What does a Cohen’s d value of 0.8 indicate?
Large effect
The statistical procedure for combining the results of different studies that examine the same topic is called…
Meta analysis
