Research Methods (Unit 1) Flashcards
What is correlation?
Statistical technique - measures strength of relationship between variables.
What is an interview?
Used to gain in-depth information and individual views.
What is a naturalistic observation?
Watching behaviour, as it occurs spontaneously, in a natural setting
What is a questionnaire survey?
A snapshot of large number of people’s attitudes, opinions or behaviour
What is an aim?
The aim of an investigation is its general purpose
What is a hypothesis?
The hypothesis is a precise, testable statement or prediction about the expected outcome of an investigation.
What is a null hypothesis?
A ‘null hypothesis’ (Ho) prediction is one that states results are due to chance and are not significant in terms of supporting the idea being investigated.
What is a directional hypothesis? (one tailed)
A directional hypothesis is more specific, in that the experimenter predicts, not only that a specific relationship will exist, but, further, the direction of that relationship
What is a non-directional hypothesis? (two tailed)
A two-tailed non-directional hypothesis predicts that the independent variable will have an effect on the dependent variable, but the direction of the effect is not specified
What is a pilot study?
A pilot study is a test run on a few participants this enables you to check for design faults before carrying out an investigation on a larger scale, this is a routine procedure especially used when carrying out questionnaire.
What is random sampling?
Everyone in the entire target population has an equal chance of being selected.
What is opportunity sampling?
Uses people from target population available at the time
What is stratified sampling?
Divides target population into groups, people in sample from each group in same proportions as population. So you would have a higher number of people between the ages of 20-30 than 70-80
What are demand characteristics?
Participants might read things into the situation and start changing their behaviour they respond to the perceived demands of the study
What is a single blind design?
Participants do not know which condition (experimental or control) they are in. For example, the use of placebos in trials of drug treatments.
What is a double blind design?
Neither the participants nor the experimenter know which condition people are being treated to. For example, a research assistant giving out drugs and measuring their effects does not know who has the placebo and who has the drug.
What is an independent variable (IV)?
Variable the experimenter manipulates - assumed to have a direct effect on the dependent variable.
What is a dependent variable (DV)?
Variable the experimenter measures, after making changes to the IV which are assumed to affect the DV.
What is an extraneous variables (Ex Vs)?
Other variables, apart from the IV, that might affect the DV. They might be important enough to provide alternative explanations for the effects, for example, confounding variables.
What is a laboratory experiment?
Artificial environment with tight controls over variables.
What is a field experiment?
Natural environment with independent variable manipulated by researchers.
What is a natural experiment?
Natural changes in independent variable are used - it is not manipulated.
What is an independent group?
Testing separate groups of people, each group is tested in a different condition
What are repeated measures?
Testing the same group of people in different conditions, the same people are used repeatedly
What are matched pairs?
Testing separate groups of people - each member of one group is same age, sex, or social background as a member of the other group
What is counterbalancing?
Alternating the order in which participants perform in different conditions of an experiment. For example, group 1 does ‘A’ then ‘B’, group 2 does ‘B’ then ‘A’ this is to eliminate order effects.
What are closed questions?
(fixed choice of answers), to generate data for easy analysis
What are open questions?
(space to write any answer) for more detailed individual answers
What are unstructured interviews?
apparently informal chats, or they can be formal
What are structured interviews?
pre-determined questions. For example, clinical tests used in psychiatry
What is quantitative research?
Gathers data in numerical form and is concerned with making ‘scientific’ measurements. Quantitative data analysis uses a barrage of inferential statistical tests
What is qualitative research?
Gathers information that is not in numerical form. For example, diary accounts, open-ended questionnaires, unstructured interviews and unstructured observations
What is a median?
All values are arranged in order, the middle value is the median. Used with interval or ordinal level data, the median is not affected much by extreme values
What is mode?
The most frequent value or score in a set of data. Used with nominal data. Does not give any information about other values
What is range?
Simple measure of dispersion- shows the total spread of data. Difference between highest and lowest scores in a set of data: top value minus bottom value plus 1. Affected by atypical, extreme values
What is Standard Deviation?
Measure of dispersion- shows degree of clustering of values around the mean. Calculating standard deviation (S): Square root of sum of all squared deviations from the mean, divided by N (or sometimes N-1).
