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Research methods Flashcards

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1
Q

What is a hypothesis?

A

A testable, specific statement of prediction.

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2
Q

What is an aim?

A

Stating the purpose of the research in a clear and precise way.

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3
Q

What are the two types of hypothesis?

A

Directional and non-directional

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4
Q

What is a directional hypothesis?

A

A hypothesis which predicts the specific direction of the results.

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5
Q

What is a non-directional hypothesis?

A

A hypothesis which predicts a difference or that one variable will affect another.

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6
Q

What is a null hypothesis?

A

A hypothesis which predicts there is no significant relationship or one variable will not have an affect on the other or there is no difference between the two sets of data.

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7
Q

What is an independent variable?

A

The thing that is manipulated by the researcher.

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8
Q

What is a dependent variable?

A

What you measure.

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9
Q

What is meant when you operationalise variables?

A

Stating what you will take as a measurement of a variable e.g. memory performance in STM (number of digits/words recalled)

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10
Q

What are the experimental research methods?

A

Laboratory experiments and field experiments. They establish cause and effect.

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11
Q

What are the non-experimental research methods?

A

Interviews/questionnaires, Observation, Correlation

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12
Q

What does it mean if a correlation is positive/negative?

A

Positive - both variables go up or both go down.

Negative- one variable goes up and the other goes down.

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13
Q

What is a limitation of interviews and questionnaires?

A

Social desirability bias.

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14
Q

Name 5 ethical issues and ways to overcome them.

A

Lack of informed consent - tell them after and offer to delete data.
Deception - be honest
Invasion of privacy - debriefing
Failure to protect participants from physical/psychologic harm - give participants the right to with draw from study or their data.
Don’t keep confidentiality - make participants anonymous.

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15
Q

What are the experiment types?

A

Quasi
Natural
Field
Lab

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16
Q

What are demand characteristics?

A

Cues in a research study which may reveal the aim of the study - leads to Hawthorne effect

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17
Q

What is the Hawthorne effect?

A

When a participant changes their behaviour and a result of finding out the aim of a study.

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18
Q

What are the different types of experimental design?

A

Repeated measures design
Independent groups design
Matched pairs design

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19
Q

What are advantages and disadvantages of repeated measure design?

A

Advantages - need less participants, no participant variables

Disadvantages - demand characteristics, cannot use same stimuli, order effects as a result of practice (can be fixed through counterbalancing - alternating the order of the conditions)

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20
Q

What are advantages and disadvantages of independent groups design?

A

Advantages - No order effects, no demand characteristics, no need fir different stimuli in conditions.
Disadvantages - Participant variables, need more participants (randomly allocate to fix)

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21
Q

What are advantages and disadvantages of a matched pairs design?

A

Advantages- No order effect, partially controls participant variables
Disadvantages - some participant variables, hard to find direct matches (to fix this randomly allocate and use identical twins.)

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22
Q

What are order effects?

A

When the order of the study’s experiences effect the study - practice, boredom, fatigue

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23
Q

What are participant variables?

A

Variables that are different between participants.

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24
Q

What are points of a quasi experiment?

A
  • The IV is a naturally occurring difference between people
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25
Q

What are the points of a natural experiment?

A
  • There is naturally occurring independent variable
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26
Q

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a quasi experiment?

A

Advantages: more replicable, ecological validity (although can be disadvantage too depending on context)
Disadvantages: can’t draw causal conclusions, other variables can potentially effect the DV

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27
Q

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a natural experiment?

A

Advantages: High ecological validity, can get around ethical constraints
Disadvantages: hard to draw causal conclusions, there is little control.

28
Q

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a field experiment?

A

Advantages: high ecological validity, no demand characteristics
Disadvantages: ethical issues (informed consent), less control over variables

29
Q

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a laboratory experiment?

A

Advantages: can establish cause and effect, replicable as uses a standardized procedure, high level control over variables.
Disadvantages: low ecological validity, demand characteristics, investigator effects.

30
Q

What is a sampling frame?

A

The area you draw sample from

31
Q

What is a target population?

A

All the people of the group you are interested in.

32
Q

What sampling methods are there?

A

Opportunity, volunteer, random, systematic (every nth) and stratified

33
Q

What is quantitative data?

A

numerical data e.g. measuring someone’s reaction time in seconds, data can be nominal, ordinal or interval

34
Q

What is qualitative data?

A

data expressed in words (can be converted to quantitative data through content analysis)

35
Q

What are the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative data?

A

Advantages:

  • quantitative - more objective and allows accurate conclusions to be drawn.
  • qualitative - more meaningful allows for detail and depth.

Disadvantages:
- quantitative - extent of objectivity is debatable

36
Q

What is standardisation?

A

The process in which procedures are kept the same.

37
Q

What are the measures of central tendency?

A

Mean, median, mode

38
Q

What are the measures of dispersion?

A

Range, interquartile range and standard deviation.

39
Q

What are the advantages and disadvantages of central tendency?

A

central tendency:
Advantages - mean - most powerful measure as it uses all data in its calculation. mode - can be used on nominal data and unaffected by extreme values. median - unaffected by outlying values.

Disadvantages - mean - can be misleading if there are outlying values. mode - does not tell you about other values. median - does not work well with small sets of data.

40
Q

When do you use different types of graphs?

A

Scatter graph - correlation
Bar chart - non continuous data (nominal data)
Histogram (continuous data e.g. time)

41
Q

What is nominal, ordinal and interval data?

A

Nominal - data that can be placed or counted into different categories (e.g. dress size)

Ordinal - involves data that is ranked in order (e.g. attractiveness scale)

Interval - measurements tat can be ordered and the intervals on the scale are equal (e.g. IQ scores)

42
Q

What are the advantages and disadvantages of measures of dispersion?

A

Advantages:
Range - simple and easy to calculate
Standard deviation - most sophisticated measure of spread

Disadvantages:
Range - affected by outlying values
SD - less effective when there are outlying values.

43
Q

What makes an experiment an experiment?

A

Manipulation of an IV, randomisation and control.

44
Q

What are confounding and extraneous variables?

A

Confounding - a variable other than the IV that might effect the DV.

Extraneous - variables that you have failed to control that could affect your results in some way.

45
Q

What is investigator/participant effects and investigator bias?

A

IE - When the researchers characteristics behaviour or expectations effect the behaviour of ps.
PE - Ps want to help the researcher whilst others might want to jeopardise it (e.g. social desirability bias)
IB - Researcher hopes and expectations may mean they change things so may count something as significant when it may not be as they want to prove their hypothesis.

46
Q

What is the observational method and what are the types?

A

What - observations have a clear aim in mind and a hypothesis, focus on specific behaviours have definitions of these behaviours and follow an objective system.

The types are naturalistic vs controlled, participant vs non-participant, overt vs covert and structured vs unstructured.

47
Q

What is an interview and what are the different types?

A

An interview is a way of gathering data through asking questions. There are structured interviews which include questions that have been thought of in advance (these can be closed (quantitative data) or open questions)). There are semi structured which involved some prepared questions and some which are formed during the interview. There are unstructured interviews which include when an interviewer may have an idea on the issue they would like to explore but have not decided any questions in advance.

48
Q

Evaluate the interview method.

A

x

49
Q

What is correlation and what are the types?

A

Correlations look at the relationship between two variables however they cannot establish causation. There are positive correlations when two variables either increase or decrease together or a negative correlation when one variable increases but the other decreases.

50
Q

Evaluate the correlational method.

A

Advantage - can indicated trends which might lead to further research.

Disadvantage - does not allow us to draw cause and effect conclusions. Difficult to control extraneous variables. May appear to be no relationship when the correlation coefficient is calculated.

51
Q

How do you carry out content analysis?

A

Watch/read sample of media, identify potential categories, media coded into categories, create tally listing the categories, examine all media and apply this then count the frequency of the occurence.

52
Q

What types of validity are there?

A

Internal validity (demand characteristics, investigator effects etc) and external validity (temporal, ecological etc)

53
Q

What is primary and secondary data?

A

Primary - data that is collected from first hand experience (e.g. designing the stdy, recruiting ps).

Secondary - data that was collected for a purpose other than the current study (e.g. government statistics)

54
Q

Evaluate primary and secondary data.

A

Primary, it fits the purpose of the study but it can be time consuming and expensive.

Secondary, it is much less time consuming and the data may have already been subjected to statistical testing so we can know whether it is significant but the data may not exactly meet the needs of the study.

55
Q

What are the different types of data distributions?

A

Normal distribution - dispersion of scores either side of the midpoint and is consistent.

Skewed distributions - scores not equally distributed:
positive skew - most scores bunched to the left, mean is always higher than median and mode.
negative skew - most scores are bunched to the right, the mean has a lower value than the median and mode.

56
Q

What is inferential testing? do some examples on a spare sheet of paper.

A

When we analyse quantitative data we apply descriptive statistics (e.g. mean), but we cant see if the difference is big enough to know if we should reject our hypothesis. It measures the probability that any difference or correlation we may have found was simply down to chance factors. The generally excepted level of significance is less than or equal to 0.05 (5%), therefore the researcher can be 95% certain that the IV has affected the DV.

57
Q

What is event and time sampling?

A

time - observing and recording behaviour in a series of given points in time.
Event - observing and recording every time a particular behaviour occurs.

58
Q

What are open and closed questions?

A

open - gives a more detailed answer

closed question - participants have to pick from simple available answers

59
Q

What are case studies and the advantages and disadvantages?

A

Idiographic nature as focuses on single case. gathers detailed info about an individual, longitudinal or retrospective.
Advantages - rich meaningful data, can be used to challenge established thinking.
Disadvantages - difficult to generalise due to idiographic nature, researcher bias.

60
Q

What are the features of science?

A

Empirical method - info gained through experimental method rather than unfounded beliefs
Replicability - repeatable method so can draw scientific conclusions, cannot have reliability without it
Objectivity - shouldn’t be affected by personal bias or expectations, opposite of subjective, systematic collection of data
Theory construction - can occur beginning (deduction) of the process or the end (induction)
Falsifiability - based on assumption that no amount of evidence can completely prove a theory
Hypothesis testing - a good theory should be able to generate testable hypotheses, this is how theories are justified
Paradigm - a general theory accepted by majority
Paradigm shift - when evidence accumulates against old paradigm so people change new belief.

61
Q

What are the sections of a scientific report and what do they include?

A
  • Abstract (aim, theory study is based on, hypothesis, brief details of method, whether null hypothesis can be rejected)
  • Intro (relevant research, hypothesis)
  • Method (design, participants, materials, procedure)
  • Results (descriptive and inferential statistics)
  • Discussion (explanation of findings, limitations and modifications, suggestions for further research).
62
Q

What is validity and how can you assess it?

A

is whether a measuring instrument measures what it intends to measure. face validity ( ask independent judges to see whether they think it measures what it should), concurrent validity (comparing new measure with previous one assessing the same thing, positive correlation needed).

63
Q

What is reliability and how can you assess it?

A

it is the consistency of a measuring instrument. Assess inter-rater reliability (two independent observers the same thing and compare recorded data, positive correlation needed), split half reliability (split test in half and compare answers, positive correlation needed), test-retest reliability (completing the same assessment on multiple occasions, positive correlation needed to indicate consistency).

64
Q

What factors effect the choice of an inferential statistics test?

A
  • Level of measurement
  • Experimental design
  • Difference/correlation
65
Q

What is peer review?

A

Checking of the validity and credibility of research by professionals as it helps prevent incorrect data getting into the public domain. From it they can change allocation of research funding and make sure the research has integrity.

66
Q

What is economic psychology

A

A blend of psychology and economics - seeks a better understanding of peoples behaviour in their economic lives. Concerned with the rationality or irrationality of economic decisions.

67
Q

What are the types of irrational thinking?

A

Availability heuristic - the rule that the likelihood of selecting something related to its availability (e.g. thinking you will get into a plane crash because such things are ‘available’ to read)

The framing effect - the idea that people decisions differ depending on whether a choice is presented as a gain or loss
Positive framing - presented with positive connotations
Negative framing - presented with negative connotations

Psychology (11 decks)

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