Week 1: Psychologists are research literate Flashcards
List the ways to understand the world
- association
- intuition
- authority
- induction
- empiricism
- deduction
Describe association
Acquiring knowledge through superstition or habit e.g. wearing a particular lucky object when completing a challenge
Describe intuition
Acquisition of knowledge not based on reasoning and inference; drawing on past experience, not patterns of reasoning
Describe authority
- acceptance of information from highly respected sources
- when people are in positions of power and authority, this adds weight to what they say
Describe induction
Acquisition of knowledge via generalisation. Some generalisations can be good/valid, some can be counterintuitive
Describe empiricism
Acquisition of knowledge through passive experience; could be though imitation of those around us
Describe deduction
Acquisition of knowledge through hypothesis testing
What are the four key components of the scientific method?
- verifiability
- predictability
- falsifiability
- fairness
What are the steps of research?
- Make an observation
- Ask a question
- Form a hypothesis that answers the question
- Make a prediction based on hypothesis
- Do an experiment to test this
- Analyse the results
- Hypothesis is either correct or incorrect
- Report results
Describe verifiability
An experiment must be replicable by another researcher
Predictability
Implies that the theory should enable us to make predictions about future events
Falsifiability
Where a hypothesis can be disproved; it must be logically possible to make an observation or do a physical experiment that would show that there is no support for the hypothesis
Fairness
Data must be considered when evaluating a hypothesis; a researcher cannot pick and choose what data tp keep. All data must be accounted fo even if it invalidates the hypothesis
What are three important elements of critical thinking?
- Scepticism
- Objectivity
- Open-mindedness
What is evidence based practice?
Conscientious, explicit and judicious decision-making which is prominent in psychology and allied health professions
What are clinical interventions?
Intended to improve the condition of individuals or groups by causing changes in their behaviour e.g. smoking cessation
What is an empirically validated intervention?
A broad body of rigorous scientific research, using gold standard methodology that demonstrates its effectiveness for a particular disorder
What are challenges to empirically validated interventions?
- Not cost effective or time efficient
- Patient compliance (is it too difficult?)
- Patients are individuals (the same doesn’t work for everyone)
- Is it ethical?
What are normative values?
- expected values from a group of people
- useful for gold standard tests
- indicate if the subject is behaving normally or not
