Research Methods Flashcards
Correlation Methods
Correlation is not causation; cannot control for all possible factors. A relationship between two variables without ascribing cause.
Experiments
Cases and effect; researchers can focus on possible effects of one or more factors.
Survey research
Collecting self-reported behavior or opinions in order to understand a topic better. The wording matters and you need to do random sampling.
Naturalistic observation
Observing whatever group you’re studying. The goal is to get a realistic and rich picture of the participants behavior.
Case studies
Study individual in depth to reveal universal principles.
Independent variable
A variable that can be manipulated.
Dependent variable
A variable that is measured by the independent variable. Cannot be controlled only predicted and then reassured after conducting and experiment.
Confounding variable
Any difference between the experimental and control conditions; other factors between cause (independent variable) and effect/outcome (dependent variable).
Control variables
Does not receive treatment from experiment.
Random assignment
Each participant has an equal chance of being placed into any group.
Random selection
The process of choosing the research participants from the population on equal terms. This happens before random assignment.
Standard deviation
A measure of how spread out numbers are from each other.
Operational definition
What do we mean by the terms we are using?
Range
Distance between highest and lowest score in a distribution.
Mode
Number that appears the most.
