Slides Week 1 Flashcards
Tenacity
- Acquiring Knowledge through superstition or habit
* * Non Scientific
Intuition
- Acquisition of knowledge not based on reasoning or inference.
- Non Scientific
Authority
- Acceptance of information from highly respected sources
* * Non Scientific
Rationalism
- Acquisition of knowledge via reasoning
* * Non Scientific
Empiricism
- Acquisition of knowledge through experience
* * Non Scientific
Why do we need the scientific method?
Human judgement is not trustworthy or reliable
• Reliance on intuition (e.g., Asch studies )
• Heuristics/biases
• Perception vs. reality
• Human observation
• Reliance on authority
Evidence must be reproducable
- other people need to be able to be reproduced and verified by others.
- Objective evidence requires an objective process
Goals of science:
- Describe
- Predict
- Determine Cause
- Explain
Good Scientifice Research is . . .
- Based on work of others
- can be replicated
- generalisable to other settings
- based on logical rationale
- tied to theory
- is doable
- generates new questions
- is incremental
- is apolitical actiity
Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Scientific Research
- Karl Popper: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)
“There can be no statements in science which cannot be tested, and therefore none which cannot in principle be refuted, by falsifying some of the conclusions which can be deduced from them.”
Can we ever know the absolute truth?
Describe the Scientific Method
- a way of observing, thinking about problems
- solving problems objectively and systematically
- a process for answering questions
Scientific Method - The Process
- Asking a question
- Identify important answers
- Formulate a hypothesis
- Collect relevant information
- Test they hypothesis
- Work with the hypothesis
- Reconsider the theory
- Ask new questions
Scientific Method - Asking a Question
- questions come as a result of curiosity
- finding an answer becomes necessary
- Questions guide the direction research takes
Scientific Method - Identify Important Factors
- Some factor could be age, gender, experience, motivations, campaign valence
Factors should: - not previously investigated
- contribute to understanding
- available to investigate
- personally and/or professionally interesting
- Lead to other questions
Scientific Method - Formulating a Hypothesis
- A Hypothesis is an educated guess “if . . . then”
- A good hypotheses are declarative
- posit an expected relationship
- reflect the theory and literature
- are brief and to the point
- are testable
Scientific Method - Collecting Relevant Information
- We set out to test the hypothesis not to prove them.
- Try to reveal the truth as much as possible whether we like it or not
- Being wrong isn’t bad, it creates more questions
- always another question to ask
Scientific Method - Test the hypothesis
- how do you know if you have a difference or not
- How do we know it is not just a random differences
- Inferential statistics allow us to assign probability levels to findings
- Is the difference real or due to chance or something else
Scientific Method - Working with the hypothesis
- Does the data support your hypothesis
- Results provide a valuable outcome either way?
- Will the scientific community value ‘null’ results?
Scientific Method - Reconsider the theory
- All theories are tentative - they evolve over time
- Observations in science must be replicable
- Science acknowledges it is fallible
- Nothing is ever proved absolutely
- Scientists remain sceptical and alert to alternative explanations
- Science and research are essentially a matter of attitude - a genuine desire to understand the way things are
Basic Research
- Tries to answer FUNDAMENTAL questions about the nature of behaviour
- Often designed to address theories about cognition, emotion, motivation, neuropsychology
- Doesn’t seek to solve problems
- arises our of curiosity and Theory; no specific applications in mind
- High degrees of control
- emphasis on refutin or supporting theories
- explain how the world works
Applied Research
- Conducted to address practical problems and potential solutions
- Takes place in the ‘real world’
- strict research protocols may need to be relaxed
Basic vs Applied Research
- Both are important and neither can be considered superior to the other
- Progress in science is dependent on synergy between basic and applied research
- Applied research is guided by basic research investigations
Inferential Statistics
Using random samples of data to about a population to describe that population
