Research Methods Flashcards
Surveys
Description: asks people to report their behavior or opinions
Strengths: Cheap to administer, gather info about people quickly
Weaknesses: Wording effects, Sampling Error (doesn’t represent entire pop), low response rate, people lie
Case Studies
Description: An observation technique in which one person is studied in depth in the hopes of revealing universal principles
Strengths: one person can tell a lot about people
Weaknesses: one case may be misleading
Naturalistic Observation
Description: observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations
Strengths: see authentic behavior
Weaknesses: can’t interfere at all
Correlation Studies
Description: Examines relationships between two variables
Correlations range from -1 to 1
Strengths: can show a relationship between two variables
Weaknesses: Correlation does not prove causation, third variable problem
Positive Correlation
as one goes up, so does the other (absolute value determines strength)
Negative Correlation
as one goes up, other goes down (absolute value determines strength)
Theory
an explanation that integrates and organizes and predicts behaviors or events
Hypothesis
a testable prediction, often prompted by a theory, educated guess often an if/then statement that expresses a relationship b/w two variables
Research
conduct a study (experiment) to either confirm or disprove our hypothesis
Independent variable
the factor that researchers manipulate so they can determine its effect. If there are multiple independent variables, they are known as levels of the independent variable
dependent variable
the factor that changes in response to the independent variable
Experimental group
the group that receives the treatment
Control group
the group that does not receive the treatment
Confounding Variable
other variables that could possibly affect the experiment (we want to minimize these)
3 keys to an experiment
- Manipulate the independent variable
- Measure the dependent variable
- Control for extraneous variables
Basic Ethical Principles
- Must not harm participants
- must not break any laws
- must obtain informed consent before and debrief participants after
- deception is okay as long as participants are informed of the deception after the experiment is concluded
- must keep individual results confidential
- Harm to animals is permissible if it is for the greater human good, there is no alternative, and the benefits outweigh harm
Population
the entire target that you want to learn about
Sample
those from the population that you select to be part of your study
- should be as representative of the population as possible
Random Sampling
everyone from the population has an equal chance of being chosen for the study
Random Assignment
once chosen, those in the sample have an equal chance of being assigned to experimental or control group
Hawthorne Effect
just being in an experiment can cause change
Placebo Effect
expectations affect performance
Placebo
a substance or treatment that has no effect apart from a person’s belief in it
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
a belief that results in behavior that makes the belief come true
Single-Blind Study
participants do not know whether they’re in the experimental or control group
Double-Blind Study
both subjects and experimenters are kept uninformed
Operational Definitions
precise definitions that show how variables will be measured (love, aggression)
Reliability
replicate the experiment and get the same results
Statistical Significance
the difference is so great that it could not be due to chance alone; the more people the lower the stat sig
Mode
the most frequently occurring score in a distribution
Mean
the arithmetic average of scores in a distribution
Median
the middle score in a rank-ordered distribution
Range
difference between the lowest and highest scores in a distribution
Standard Deviation
a computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean
**the higher the variance or SD, the more spread out the distribution is
Normal Distribution
mean, median, and mode are all the same
Positively Skewed distribution
one high score outlier with lots of low scores
Negatively Skewed distribution
one low score outlier with lots of high scores
Inferential Statistics
can the findings (results) from our study be generalized (inferred) to the entire population? To find out, we need to conduct tests to see if our data is actually meaningful or if our results could have been due to chance alone
