RESEARCH METHODS- Additional stuff

Question 1

Pilot study

Answer 1

• Small scale study done before main study
• Purpose is to check/ test procedural details

Question 2

Why do we run pilot studies?

Answer 2

• Don’t want to waste time during real experiment
• Don’t want to waste money on resources
• An opportunity to change things so findings are more sufficient

Question 3

Things to check for in a pilot study

Answer 3

• Do participants understand instructions
• Does equipment work
• Check ethics- are participants upset in any way?
• Timing- try different amount of time
• Ask a few pictures about their experience of taking part

Question 4

Test- retest relaibility

Answer 4

• Testing experiments/observations etc over time
• Results are reliable over time or only over 1 period of time- bound to time period- check not one off results

Question 5

Inter- rater reliability

Answer 5

• Inter-rater reliability is how much two or more people agree when they judge or score the same thing.
• It shows whether different raters give similar results when looking at the same data.
• High inter-rater reliability means the results are consistent, while low reliability means the scores are very different.

Question 6

Reporting psychological investigations

Answer 6

• Standardised structure- way we write up psychology experiments

Question 7

Procedure of reporting psychological explanations

Answer 7

• ABSTRACT- short summary of whole study
  PURPOSE:
• Other researchers read it to see if your study is relevant to their research
• INTRODUCTION- review of previous research done around topic
  PURPOSE:
• Explains how we’ve got to aims and hypothesis of present research
• METHOD- allows replication of study
  PURPOSE:
• Provide a clear and detailed description of how the study was conducted
• RESULTS- Include descriptive statistics and inferential statistics- see whether we accept or reject the hypothesis
  PURPOSE:
• Present findings so readers can see the outcomes easily
• DISCUSSION- Draw conclusions from findings, relate it to previous research, applications of research

Question 8

Referencing

Answer 8

• Use Harvard referencing
• Credit previous researchers
• No plagiarism

Question 9

Referencing:
1. Journal
2. Book
3. Web

Answer 9

1. author, date, title, page numbers
2. author, date, title of book, place of publication, publisher
3. Web- source, data, title, weblink, date accessed

Question 10

Extraneous variables

Answer 10

Variables we try to control

Question 11

Confounding variables

Answer 11

Changes with IV/ Vary with IV

Question 12

Face validity

Answer 12

• How much a test or measurement appears to measure what it’s supposed to, just by looking at it.
• It’s about whether it seems relevant at first glance.

Question 13

Concurrent validity

Answer 13

• When you do a second measure to see if you get the same results

Question 14

Ecological validity

Answer 14

• How well the results of a study apply to real-life settings outside the research environment.

Question 15

Temporal validity

Answer 15

• How well the results of a study remain true over time and apply to different time periods.

Question 16

Bar chart

Answer 16

• Discontinuous data
• Bars NOT touching

Question 17

Histogram

Answer 17

• Continuous data
• Bars ARE touching