Section 2: RESEARCH DESIGN Flashcards
Random assignment
Every participant having an equal chance of being in either the experimental group or the control group…
- Often used in experimental methods when directly manipulating the IV
Experiment
Involves the manipulation of an independent variable, the measurement of a dependent variable, and the exposure of various participants to one or more of the conditions being studied
Cause and effect relationship
A relationship in which one event causes another to happen.
- One of the strengths of experiments: It allows manipulation of the IV in order to measure the DV - to give a true measure of cause-effect relationship
Confounding variables
In a controlled experiments, confounding variables are factors that cause differences between the experimental group and the control group, other than the chosen IV
- Ex: When exploring is alcohol (IV) affects driving ability, the researchers found a CV that not all participants had the same driving ability which caused differences in the DV.
Third variable problem
A type of confounding in which a third variable leads to a mistaken causal relationship between two others. For instance, cities with a greater number of churches have a higher crime rate.
Random allocation
The division of the sample into groups in away that every individual has an equal chance of being allocated
-E.g. Assigning participants to conditions using a random wheel generating AI tool
- A strength of experiments
Demand characteristics
Clues participants pick up on that help them discover the purpose of the study and suggests to them how researchers would like then to respond/behave.
- A weakness of experiments
Correlations
It is the relationship between two co-variables
Internal validity
Refers to whether the design and conduct of a study are able to support the proposal that cause and effect relationship exists between the IV and DV.
- Ensures that no other variable expect the IV caused the observed effect on the DV.
- The marker that you are truly testing what you were trying to test
External validity
The extent to which the result from a study apply to all other contexts beyond the original study.
E.g. If it is a laboratory experiment, can the result be found in normal, everyday observations?
- A weakness of experiments
Survey
When researchers use questionnaires or interviews to ask a large number of people questions about their thoughts, behavior and/or attitudes. It is a self-report technique. Often employ the use of a Likert Scale.
Likert Scale
A progressive scale, often 1-5 or represented by images such as unhappy to happy faces
Social desirability bias
- the tendency to underreport socially undesirable attitudes and behaviors and to over report more desirable attributes.
- Accuracy of surveys is an issue as participants often lie due to…
Interviews
Face-to-face interaction with another individual and results in collection of data. There are 3 main types of interview: Structured / Unstructured / Semi structured
Meta – Analysis
One particular form of research method that uses secondary data is meta-analysis.
- Refers to a process where the data from a large number of studies, which have involved the same research questions and methods of research are combined.
- The researcher may simply discuss the findings or conclusions – this is a qualitative analysis. Additionally, they might use a quantitative approach and perform a statistical analysis of the combined data from all the studies they are looking at. - May involve calculating the effect size – basically the DV of a meta-analysis – which allows the researcher to assess overall trends.
