Research Methods: Booklet 1 And Booklet 2 Flashcards
What is an aim?
A statement of the research
What is a one-tailed hypothesis?
Also known as directional, as it specifies a direction example: boys will be better than girls in the strength test
What is a two tailed hypothesis?
Also known as non directional, doesn’t specify a direction, example: there will be a difference in strength between boys and girls
What is a null hypothesis
States that a relationship between the two variables being studied will not be found, example: there will be no difference between boys and girls in a memory test
What is the difference between a bar chart and a histogram?
Bar chart shows non-continuous data (e.g. blood group) and there are gaps between bars, whereas a histogram shows continuous data (e.g. temperature)
What is correlational analysis?
A measure of correlation between two variables. A correlation coefficient can be used to measure how strong this correlation is.
What are the advantages of correlational analysis?
Do not need a controlled experiment, can use sensitive data
What are the disadvantages of correlational analysis?
Cannot establish cause and effect, coefficients can be due to chance
What is a correlation coefficient?
A measure to show how strong a correlation is, between +1 and -1
How would you draw a negative correlation
Draw from the top of the y axis to the bottom right of x axis ()
How would you draw a positive correlation
Draw from the bottom left of x axis, top right of y axis (/)
How do you show no correlation
Results are scattered, no line of best fit
What is normal distribution?
Symmetrical about the mean. The mean median and mode are all the same
What is a negative skew?
Where more scores are at the higher (right) side of the data. Tail to the left, mode is more than the median
What is a positive skew?
More scores at the lower (left) side of the data. Tail is to the right. The mode is less than the median
What is an independent variable
The variable you change/manipulate
What is a dependent variable!
The variable that will be affected by changes in IV (the thing you are measuring in e.g. time)
What is operationalisation?
Planning and describing the process in which the variables are measured, for example, to measure the effect of water vs red bull on memory performance, you would need to measure exactly how much of each you were using e.g. 500ml of both
What is random allocation?
Everyone has an equal chance of being picked for either condition, e.g. computer generated or names in a bucket
What is counterbalancing?
Where the order of tasks is mixed up. Helps with order effects in repeated measures design
What is randomisation?
When materials are presented to the participants in random order to prevent order effects
What is standardisation?
When a test is made uniform to adhere to a specific standard. Everything should be as similar as possible for the participants
What are extraneous variables?
Variables other than the IV that can effect the DV, can be controlled by random sampling
What are confounding variables?
A type of extraneous variable that can effect the IV and the DV
