Unit 4 - Research Flashcards
Critical Thinking
- making reasoned judgements (people’s judgements should be logical and well thought out)
- the ability to ask and seek answers for critical questions at the right time
- can help avoid false beliefs that may lead to poor decisions or prove dangerous to our mental and physical health
4 Basic Criteria for Critical Thinking
1) there are very few “truths” that do not need to be subjected to testing (only religious/personal beliefs/values can be accepted without proof)
2) all evidence is not equal in quality
3) just because someone is considered to be an authority or to have a lot of expertise does not make everything that person claims automatically true
4) critical thinking requires an open mind (balance of skepticism and willingness to consider possibilities)
Empericism
using data to back up a claim
Scientific Method
a system of reducing bias and error in the measurement of data
5 Steps of Scientific Method
1) identify question/problem
2) hypothesis
3) select method, conduct research
4) analyze data, evaluate hypothesis
5) publish, peer review, replication and/or further studies
Confirmation Bias
tendency to only notice things that agree with view of the world
Descriptive Methods
gather information about what’s happened or is happening
Naturalistic Observation
watch organisms in their natural environment
PROS: realistic picture of behavior
CONS: observer bias, each naturalistic setting is unique, researchers don’t have control over natural world
Observer Effect
organisms who know they are being watched will not behave normally
Participant Observation
observer becomes participant in group they’re observing
Observer Bias
observer has opinion about what they expect to see, and person recognizes ONLY actions that support preconceived expectations and ignores actions that coincide with it
Blind Observers
observers don’t know what the research question is, and therefore have no preconceived notions about what they “should” see
Laboratory Observation
researcher controls everything
PROS: degree of control researcher/observer has
CONS: artificial situation might result in artificial behaviors
Case Studies
participant(s) studied in great detail
PROS: tremendous amount of detail, only way to get certain types of information, good way to study rare occurrences
CONS: researchers can’t apply results to other similar people, vulnerable to bias because method is a form of detailed observation
Surveys
researchers ask series of questions about topic they’re studying
PROS: private information, tremendous amount of data on very large group of people
CONS: have to be careful about participants, people don’t always give accurate answers, have to be careful about wording of questions
Representative Sample
randomly select people from group researchers are interested in
Population
entire group in which researcher is interested in
Participants
people who are a part of the study
Courtesy Bias
deliberately giving the answer they think is more socially correct rather than their true opinion so that no one gets offended
Correlation
measure of the relationship between 2 or more variables
Variable
anything that can change or vary
Correlation Coefficient
- represents the direction of the relationship and its strength
- represented by “r”
- if positive –> the 2 variables increase in the same direction
- if negative –> inverse relationship
- number always ranges between +1.00 and -1.00
- number closer to +1.00 is strong positive correlation
- number closer to -1.00 is strong negative correlation
- if number is closer to zero it is weaker
Operational Definition
specifically names the operations (steps/procedures) that the experimenter must use to control/measure variables in the experiment
Independent Variable
variable that’s manipulated
Dependent Variable
response of participants that’s measured
Hawthorne Effect
participants’ behavior is altered as a result of being a part of the experiment
Confounding Variables
variables that interfere with each other and their possible effects on some other variable of interest
Experimental Group
exposed to independent variable
Control Group
gets not treatment or placebo
Random Assignment
each participant has equal chance of being assigned to each condition
Placebo Effect
the expectations and biases of the participants in a study can influence their behavior
Placebo
harmless substitute which has no medical effect
Experimenter Effect
when researcher is measuring dependent variable, they could unintentionally give participants clues about how they’re supposed to respond
Single-Blind Study
participants are “blind” to treatment they receive
Double-Blind Study
participants and experimenters are “blind” to treatment participants receive
Stereotype
set of characteristics that people believe is shared by all members of a particular social category
Basic Research
research for knowledge
Applied Research
immediate application of research/social issue being addressed
Ethnocentrism
being biases based on your own ethnicity
Ethical Treatment
people who volunteer for a study will be able to expect that no physical or psychological harm should come to them
Institutional Review Boards (IRBS)
- groups of psychologists or other professionals who look ever each proposed study and judge it according to its safety and consideration for research participants
- usually at universities because that is where most psychological research is done
- they look at all aspects of projected study (written material that explains the research, potential subjects, equipment used in study)
Common Ethical Guidelines
1) rights and well-being of participants must be weighed against study’s value to science
2) participants must be allows to make an informed decision about participation
3) deception must be justified
4) participants may withdraw from study at any time
5) participants must be protected from risks or told explicitly of risks
6) investigators must debrief participants
7) data must remain confidential
8) if for any reason study results in undesirable consequences for participant, researcher is responsible for detecting and removing, or correcting, these consequences
Informed Consent
researchers using participants under 18 have to have their parents informed and have them give consent
Debriefing
participants have to be told after study the true nature of the study, expectation of results, and if deception was used why it was necessary
Animal Research Pros
- animals have shorter life-span –> looking at long-term effect is easier
- animals are easier to control (diet, living arrangement, genetic relatedness)
- animals engage in simpler behavior –> easier to see effects of manipulations
- animals can be used in ways that researchers can’t use people (researchers avoid exposing animals to unnecessary pain and suffering)
White Laboratory Rats
recognized species different from ordinary rats because it was bred with its own kind so that each white rat is a genetic “twin” of all the others
Experiment
only way to determine cause of behavior by manipulating variable
PROS: can find causal relationship, researcher controls everything
CONS: might be artificial behavior
Statistics
branch of math that’s concerned with the collection and interpretation of data from samples
Descriptive Statistics
way of organizing numbers and summarizing them so that they can be understood
Measures of Central Tendency
number that best represents central part of frequency distribution
Measures of Variability
used to indicate how spread out data are (tightly packed or widely dispersed)
Frequency Distribution
table or graph that shows how often different numbers, or scores, appear in a particular set of scores
Histogram
bar graph
Polygon
line graph; allows researchers to see shape of a set of data easily
Central Tendency
data points in area with highest frequency
Variability
data points in area with lower frequency
Normal Curve/Bell Curve
used as a model for standard deviation
Skewed
distribution is not even; scores are concentrated toward one side of the distribution
Negatively Skewed
tail to the left
Positively Skewed
tail to the right
Bimodal Distribution
frequency polygon shows 2 high points rather than 1; mean, median, and mode are useless
3 Measures of Central Tendency
- mean
- median
- mode
Mean
average
Median
score that falls in the middle of an ordered distribution of scores
Mode
most frequent score is taken as central measure
Outliers
values that are extreme; distort accuracy
When Distribution is Skewed
- mean is pulled to direction of tail of direction
- mode is highest point
- median is between mean and mode
2 Measures of Variability
range and standard deviation
Range
difference between highest and lowest scores in the set of scores
Standard Deviation
can’t be negative; how similar your data is together (clumped or spread out); the smaller the better (mean is useful indication of data)
Z Score
how many standard deviations you are away from the mean
Inferential Statistics
allow researchers to draw conclusions/inferences about results of research and about whether those are only true for specific group in study or if results can be generalized to larger population
Statistic Significance
way to test differences to see how likely differences are to be real
Significant Difference
not due to chance because it’s too important
T-Test
testing if results are statistically significant
p is less than or equal to 0.05
the data is significant and you can draw conclusions that your independent variable caused your dependent variable
F-Test / Analysis of Variance
determines if 3+ means are different from each other; can also evaluate more than 1 independent variable at a time
Chi-Square
compares frequencies of proportions between groups to see if they are different
