Week 1: Overview and Principles of Empirical Science

Question 1

descriptive statistics

Answer 1

how can we describe efficiently whether our language lab group outperforms the control group or not?

Question 2

inferential statistics

Answer 2

how we can infer from a sample data characteristics of the population?

Question 3

Types of empirical research

Answer 3

• descriptive research
• correlational research
• experimental research
• quasi-experimental research

Question 4

descriptive research

Answer 4

describe a phenomenon

Question 5

correlational research

Answer 5

relationships between phenomena

Question 6

experimental research

Answer 6

causal relationships

Question 7

quasi-experimental research

Answer 7

similar to experimental but with less control or no random allocation

Question 8

Empirical cycle: 1. observation

Answer 8

an idea for a broad research question based on (any) observation

Question 9

three characteristics of the knowledge acquisition process

Answer 9

1. systematic empiricism
2. public verification
3. solvable problems (observable, testable)

Question 10

empirical cycle: 2. Induction

Answer 10

induce (specific to general) general hypothesis/theory based on observation, answering the broad research question.

induction is fundamentally uncertain: it could be wrong

Question 11

empirical cycle: 3. deduction

Answer 11

deduce (general to specific) a testable (measurable, falsifiable) working hypothesis/specific RQ from general hypothesis/theory

Question 12

conceptual definition

Answer 12

what do we mean with a concept

general hypothesis

Question 13

operational definition

Answer 13

how do we observe/measure/manipulate a concept/

working hypothesis

Question 14

empirical cycle: 4. test

Answer 14

test working hypothesis by doing research

Question 15

empirical cycle: 5. evaluate

Answer 15

what does result say about general hypothesis/theory?

Question 16

independent variable

Answer 16

the variable manipulated in the experiment

Question 17

dependent/response variable

Answer 17

expected to vary in response to the levels of the independent variable

Question 18

variance

Answer 18

total variation is the sum of deviations of all scores against the mean of all scores

Question 19

division of variance into components

Answer 19

total variance = systematic variance + error variance

Question 20

total variance

Answer 20

all differences between observations and grand mean

Question 21

systematic variance

Answer 21

variation between groups

Question 22

error variance

Answer 22

variation within groups

Question 23

VAF(variance Accounted For)

Answer 23

systematic variance / total variance

Question 24

range of effect size

Answer 24

• 0 -> no relationship, no variance can be explained by group
• 1 -> perfect relationship, all variance can be explained by group

Question 25

Rule of thumb effect size (Cohen)

Answer 25

• small: 0.01
• medium: 0.06
• large: 0.14