Research Methods-all papers Flashcards
What is an aim?
A general statement about the study derived from a theory.
What is a hypothesis?
A clear, precise and testable statement of the relationship of variables to be investigated.
What is the difference between a directional and a non- directional hypothesis?
A directional hypothesis states the direction in which the results are likely to go, usually based off previous research. Whereas, a non- directional hypothesis simply states there ill be a difference between the conditions or groups, this is usually used when there is no previous research or when previous research findings are contradictory.
What is an independent variable?
The variable that is manipulated.
What is a dependent variable?
The variable that is measured.
What is meant by correlation?
A mathematical technique which measures the relationship between two continuous variables (co-variables).
What is the correlation- coefficient?
The value that tells us the strength and direction of the relationship between the two variables.
Explain what is meant by a case study.
Case studies often involve analysis of unusual individuals or events, e.g. a person with a rare disorder. However, they can be used to concentrate on more ‘typical’ cases such as an elders recollection of childhood memories.
Case studies usually collect qualitative data and are usually longitudinal, the researchers can also construct a case history of the individual.
What is a strength of case studies?
Case studies usually offer detailed insights that may shed light on very unusual and atypical forms of behaviour, which is usually preferred to the more ‘superficial’ forms of data.
Case studies may generate hypotheses for future cases and solidarity.
What is a limitation of case studies?
Case studies have low generalisability as they deal with small sample sizes and 5the information collected is based on a subjective selection and interpretation of the researcher. Also, all personal accounts from ppts may be pone to inaccuracy and memory decay.
What is content analysis?
Content -analysis is a type of observational research in which people are studied indirectly through the communication they have produced.
The aim is to summarise and describe this communication in a systematic way so overall conclusions can be drawn.
Explain how content analysis is conducted.
- Identify the hypothesis you will study.
- Identify categories that’ll be used.
- Count the frequency of the categories in the piece of data.
What is thematic analysis?
A form of content analysis but the outcome is qualitative data .
Explain how thematic analysis is conducted.
- Identify themes, themes refer to an idea that is recurrent.
- Themes are then developed into broader categories.
- Once the researcher is satisfies that the categories cover most aspects of the data, they may collect a new set of data to test the validity of their themes and categories.
- Assuming these explain the new set of data adequately the researcher will write a final report, usually including direct quotes from the data to illustrate each theme.
What is a strength of content analysis?
Content analysis can get around many ethical issues normally associated with psychological research, much of the material that an analyst might want to study may already exist within the public domain. So there is no problem with permission, this is proved to have high external validity.
Content analysis is also flexible as it can produce quantitative or qualitative data depending on the aims of the research.
What is a limitation of content analysis?
People tend to be observed indirectly for content analysis meaning communications they produce are usually analysed outside the context within it occurred.
There is a danger that the researcher may attribute opinions and motivations to the speaker or writer not that were not intended originally. This suggests content analysis may suffer from lack of objectivity .
What indicates good reliability?
A correlation coefficient that exceeded +0.80.
Describe how a researcher can improve reliability.
- Questionnaires: Questionnaires should be measured using the test-retest method, comparing 2 sets of data should produce a correlation that exceeds +0.80.
If the test-retest reliability is low, the researcher could rewrite the questions or replace questions. - Interviews: To best ensure reliability the same researcher should be used, if not possible all researchers should be properly trained, ensuring not to use leading or ambiguous questions.
This is easily avoided in structured interviews, where the interviewer’s behaviour is more controlled by fixed questions. - Observations: The reliability of observations can be improved by ensuring behavioural categories have been operationalised and are measurable. Categories cannot overlap, and all possible behaviours must be covered.
- Experiments: In experiments it is the procedure that are the focus of reliability. In order to to compare the performance of different participants, so the procedures must be the same every time. Therefore, in terms of reliability an experimenter is concerned about standardised procedures.
How would a stratified sample be taken.
1) identify the strata
2) calculate the required proportion for each stratum based on size of the target population.
3) select the sample at random from each stratum.
4) Use a random selection method for this.
Describe the purpose of carrying out peer review.
- To allocate research funding to projects.
- To make sure the research is of good quality and is relevant.
- To be able to suggest improvements so that faulty or incorrect data is not released to he public.
Give 2 strengths of conducting a content analysis.
- It has high mundane realism and external validity as what is being studied is already out there in the real world.
- Produces a large set of both qualitative and quantatitve data that is easy to analyse.
Give 2 limitations of a content analysis.
- Causality cannot be established as it merely describes the data.
- As it only describes the data it cannot extract any deeper meaning or explanation for the data patterns arising.
