Research Methods In Psych Flashcards
What are the 2 main types of research?
Basic and Applied Research
What is basic research?
Basic research is research that seeks knowledge and to grow our scientific understanding of a topic
What is applied research?
Research that solves practical problems
What are the 4 goals of psychology?
DEPC- description, explanation, predictions and control
Define the 1st goal of psychology; description
Descriptions are used as data from observational notes for scientific discovery. They can include as much detail as possible and tell us what to describe.
Define the 2nd goal of psychology; explanation
Explanations are used to help us understand the reasons behind the mental process we are describing. Explanations tell us why the behavior is happening.
Define the 3rd goal of psych; predictions
Predictions are made to specify when, what, and why a behavior will happen. They also give us the likely hood of something happening again.
Define the 4th goal of psychology; control
Controls are used to manipulate or apply conditions to a specific behavior or mental process to minimize external causes of the predicted behaviour.
Controls tell us the causes of an occurring mental process or behavior
What is naturalistic observation?
The study of natural behavior
What are descriptive methods and what do they do?
DMethods are naturalistic observation, laboratory observations, case studies, surveys,
DMethods lead to the formation of testable hypotheses
What is correlation coefficient?
A mathematical formula of 2 (or more) variables that can represent direction and/or strength of the relationship being tested
What is correlational research?
A method used to investigate wether 2 variables (and their behavioral traits) are related
What correlation is this?
0.0
No correlation, scattered graph
What is a perfect correlation?
-1 or +1
