Research Methods

Question 1

Define informed consent

Answer 1

The participants must know what they are taking part in, in written form as a contract or agreement

Question 2

Define right to withdraw

Answer 2

Can leave study without prejudice and are not forced to give reasoning or carry on the study

Question 3

Define confidentiality

Answer 3

No personal details or results are shared with anyone outside the study

Question 4

Define competence

Answer 4

Qualified to carry out procedures/ appropriate care afterwards and during the study

Question 5

Define protection of participants

Answer 5

Participants have to leave the study in a better or the same state/ way as when they started

Question 6

Define debrief

Answer 6

Telling participants and explaining fully what and why they used the experiment

When explaining the results and experiment, the participants have the right to withdraw their results/data

Question 7

Define deception:

Active

Passive

Answer 7

Active - lying to the participant directly

Passive - avoiding giving all the information

Question 8

Define experimental method

Answer 8

A research method that can find CASUAL RELATIONSHIPS between variables

Question 9

Define independent variable

Answer 9

The thing the investigator deliberately changes to see the effect on the dependant variable.

Question 10

Define dependent variable

Answer 10

The thing the investigator measures to see if it has been affected by the independent variable

Question 11

Define extraneous variable:

Participant

Situational

Answer 11

Anything apart from the independent variable that could affect the dependent variable

Participant-the people taking part

Situational-the environment

Question 12

Define operationalised

Answer 12

Putting variables in a study into practise and specifying how they will be measured

Question 13

Define hypothesis

Answer 13

A statement predicting the relationship between two variables

Question 14

Define null hypothesis

Answer 14

A prediction that there will be no relationship between the variables

Question 15

Define falsification of hypothesis

Answer 15

The statement must be written in a way that it could be proven wrong

Question 16

Define one tailed hypothesis

Answer 16

Stating exactly how the independent variable will affect the dependent variable (exactly what the difference is)

Question 17

Define two tailed hypthesis

Answer 17

A hypothesis that says there will be a difference ( the Independent variable will affect the Dependent variable) but doesn’t say what the difference will be

Question 18

Define experimental design

Answer 18

How we allocate participants into the conditions OR how participants experience different levels of the Independent variable

Question 19

Define repeated measures design

Answer 19

When the participants all take part in all levels of the Independent variable

Question 20

Give an advantage and disadvantage of repeated measures design

Answer 20

A- don’t require as many participants (easier, quicker, cost effective)

-participant variables are fully controlled and wont affect the result

D- participants performance might get better or worse with practice or repetition (order effects)

-participants do all levels of the Independent variable so are more likely to guess the aim and change their behaviour (demand characteristics)

Question 21

Define Independent design

Answer 21

Each participant only takes part in one level of the Independent variable

Question 22

Give an advantage and a disadvantage of independent design

Answer 22

A- removes order effects, the fact that participants performance might get better or worse through practice or repetition.

-less likely to guess the aim

D- participant variable is fully controlled, it wont influence the results.

-require more participants (harder, slower, less cost effective)

Question 23

Define matched pairs design

Answer 23

When each participant only takes part in one level of the Independent variable (like independent design) but they’re are matched with participants in the other group on the basis of relevant characteristics

Question 24

Give an advantage and a disadvantage of matched pairs design

Answer 24

A- results are more valid, reduces influence of order affect and demand characteristics

D-difficult to find people that have exactly the same characteristics

Question 25

Define participant variables

Answer 25

Different people in the study have different characteristics so you have to be careful when composing the results e.g. Age

Question 26

Define order effects

Answer 26

When a participant does a task more than once in a repeated measures design their performance may get better or worse after practise/repitition

Question 27

Define counterbalancing

Answer 27

Only in repeated measures design the group is split in half. One group does ‘task A/task B’ the other does ‘task B/task A’ (ABBA method)

Question 28

Define demand characteristics

Answer 28

Any clues in the situation that cause the participants to change their behaviour/they can guess the aim/how they are expected to act

Question 29

Define random allocation

Answer 29

Randomly assign participants to groups/levels of the Independent variable/ equal chance of being selected to either group