Research Methods Flashcards
Paradigm Shift
a particularly dramatic change in our way of thinking
Ex: The Earth is not the centre of the Universe
Anecdotal Evidence
evidence gathered from others or self experience
experiment
scientific tool used to measure the effect of one variable on another
independent variable
variable manipulated by the scientist
dependent variable
variable being observed by the scientist
experimental group
the group that receives the manipulated independent variable
control group
the group that does NOT receive the manipulated independent variable
within-subjects design
manipulating the independent variable within each participant to minimize the effect of external variables on the dependent measure
practice effect
improved performance over the course of an experiment due to becoming more experienced
between subjects design
one group acts as the control group while the other is the experimental group
confounding variable
a variable other than the independent variable that has an effect on the results
population
the general group of people we are trying to learn about
sample
the selected members of the population that we actually collect data from
random sample
choosing a sample at random from the entire population
it reduces chances of biased groups but is rarely achievable
random assignment
assigning subjects to either the experimental or control groups at random to avoid any biases that may cause difference between the groups of subject
placebo effect
effect that occurs when an individual exhibits a response to a treatment that has no related therapeutic effect
participant bias
when a participant’s actions in an experiment influences the results outside of the manipulations of the experimenter
experimental bias
actions made by the experimenter, intentionally or not, to promote the result they hope to achieve
descriptive statistics
they present info about data at-a-glance to give you an overall idea of the results of the experiment
ex: histogram, mean, median and mode, stdev
frequency distribution
type of graph that illustrates the distribution of how frequently values appear in the data set
normal distribution
a distribution with a characteristic smooth, symmetrical, bell-shaped curve containing a single peak
mean
the average value of a data set
outliers
extreme points, distant from others in a data set
mode
the value that appears most frequently in the set
median
the centre value in a data set when the set is arranged numerically
standard deviation
a measure of the average distance of each data point from the mean
inferential statistics
statistics that allow us to use results from samples to make inferences about overall, underlying populations
ex: t-test
t-test
a statistical test that considers each data point from both groups to calculate the probability that the two samples were dram from the same population
p-value
a value expressing the probability of the t-test
statistical significance
when the difference between 2 groups is due to some true difference between the properties of the 2 groups and not simply due to random variation
correlation
a measure of the strength of the relationship between 2 variables
