research methods lessons 7-12

Question 1

what are the stages in writing a psychological report

Answer 1

1) Title - involve clear focus of study and key variables
2) Abstract - summary of main concepts. Involve: aims, hypotheses, experimental design, sample used
3) Introduction leading to aims/hypothesis - general discussion
4) Method section - experimental design, sample, apparatus/materials, procedure
5) Results section - descriptive stats: tables and charts. Stat tests used
6) Discussion section - summary of results, relationship to background research, limitations.
7) Reference section - Name, Date, Title of article, Journal title, issue number, page number

Question 2

what are the types of correlation

Answer 2

Positive
Negative
No correlation

Question 3

what indicates the strength of a correlation

Answer 3

correlation coefficient between -1 and +1

Question 4

evaluation of correlations

Answer 4

Adv - establishes the strength between variables. Once correlation has been conducted predictions can be made
Dis - doesn’t establish cause and effect. Could be a third confounding variable involved. Only measure linear relationships and not curvilinear

Question 5

what is the level of statistical significance definition

Answer 5

level at which decision to reject null hypothesis is. how sure we can be that the IV is affecting the DV and not due to chance

Question 6

chance definition

Answer 6

Something has no real cause

Question 7

why is the 5% significance level used

Answer 7

1) not too strict or too lenient
2) minimises chance of making a type I or type II error

Question 8

what is a type I error

Answer 8

when you reject null hypothesis but results are actually due to chance so should have accepted null hypothesis

Question 9

what is a type II error

Answer 9

when you accept the null hypothesis but results are significant so should have rejected null hypothesis

Question 10

what is nominal data

Answer 10

data consisting of a number of participants put into a category

Question 11

what is ordinal data

Answer 11

Data that can be ranked from highest to lowest

Question 12

what is interval data

Answer 12

data has fixed and even intervals such as height and weight values

Question 13

steps to identify which stat test to use

Answer 13

1) does the test involve a correlation, a test of difference or and association
2) which research design is being used
3) which level of measurement is being used

Question 14

table to decide which stat test to use

Answer 14

type of test. level of measurement
Non parametric. nominal. Chi squared. sign test. chi squared
Non parametric. ordinal. Mann Whitney. wilcoxon. spearman’s rho
Parametric. interval Unrelated t-test Related t-test. pearsons r