Research Methods 8-12

Question 1

participant variables? (EV)

Answer 1

Characteristics of pps that may affect the DV (age, intelligence, gender etc).
choosing an appropriate experimental design can overcome it:
- matched pairs and repeated measures help avoid.
-random allocation of pps to conditions in independent groups ensure groups are unbiased. (Not possible for quasi experiment)

Question 2

Environmental variables? (EV)

Answer 2

Factors in the environment where experiment is conducted that could affect DV (temperature, time of day, noise etc)
- solution is standardisation: making sure all conditions,materials and instructions are the same for all pps.

Question 3

What are extraneous and confounding variables?

Answer 3

Extraneous variables are variables that could potentially have an effect of the DV.
Confounding variables are variables that are affecting the DV.
- to insure a study has validity, extraneous variables mist be controlled to prevent them becoming confounding variables.

Question 4

Investigator effects? (EV)

Answer 4

When the person collecting the data has knowledge about the aim of research which affects the data obtained. (Eg. Observer bias)

• overcome using double blind technique: neither researcher or pps know the hypothesis or condition of the study the pps is in.
• standardised scripts should be written to ensure investigator acts same way with all pps.

Question 5

Demand characteristics? (EV)

Answer 5

When pps use features of the study to guess the aim and change their behaviour in order to fulfil it.

• they could also try annoy the researcher by giving wrong results= screw you effect.
• eg. Observer effects, interviewer effects.
• overcome with single blind technique: pps don’t know hypothesis of study or condition they are in. (Difficult in repeated measures)

Question 6

What are operationalised behavioural categories?

Answer 6

The specific and observable behaviours to be recorded during an observation.
They represent the general construct under investigation and :
- allow observers to tally observations into groups.
- provide clear focus for researcher.
- enable proposal of testable hypothesis.
- result in greater reliability.
- provides data that is easy to analyse.

Question 7

Observer bias?

Answer 7

Occurs when observer knows the aims of the study, and this influences their observations.
Avoided by:
1. inter-observer reliability- two observers agree beforehand on interpretations of behavioural categories. Both individually observe. Recordings correlated using statistical test. If agree, study has inter-observer reliability.
2. Intra-observer reliability- observation is video recorded so can be watched several times.

Question 8

What is time and event sampling?

Answer 8

Time sampling- recording all behaviours in a given time frame. Eg. Every 30 seconds.

Event sampling- recording every time a certain behaviour/event occurs in target individual(s).