Week 2: Research Methods

Question 1

Key Components to a statistical investigation…

Answer 1

PLANNING THE STUDY - asking a testable research question & deciding how to collect data

EXAMINING THE DATA - determine appropriate ways to examine data; relevant graphs, descriptive statistics, patterns in data, individual observations that deviate from overall patterns - what does it reveal? - is there evidence for reliability/validity

INFERRING FROM THE DATA - what are the valid statistical methods for drawing inferences “beyond” data you collected

DRAWING CONCLUSIONS - based on what you’ve learned from data, what conclusions can you draw and who do they apply to; can you draw a cause-and-effect conclusion about your treatments?

Question 2

Reliability

Answer 2

Refers to the consistency of a measure

Question 3

Validity

Answer 3

The degree to which a measure is assessing what it is intended to measure

Question 4

Cause-and-Effect

Answer 4

Related to whether we say one variable is causing changes in the other variable, versus other variables that may be related to these two variables

Question 5

Distribution

Answer 5

The pattern of variation in data

Question 6

2 Fundamental aspects of statistical thinking

Answer 6

DATA VARY - values of a variable vary

Analyzing the pattern of variation (DISTRIBUTION of the variable) often reveals insights

Question 7

Level of Significance

Answer 7

A result is statistically significant if it is unlikely to arise by chance alone

Compare the p-value to the cut-off value

If p-value is smaller than cut-off value, we REJECT the hypothesis that only random chance is at play

Question 7

P-value

Answer 7

Probability of observing a particular outcome in a sample, or more extreme, under a large conjecture abt the larger population/process

The LOWER the P-VALUE the HIGHER the STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Question 8

Sample

Answer 8

Collection of individuals on which we collect data

Question 9

Population

Answer 9

Larger collection of individuals that we would like to generalize our results to

Question 10

Generalized

Answer 10

Related to whether the results from the sample can be generalized to a larger population

Question 11

Random Sample

Answer 11

Using a probability-based method to select a subset of individuals for the sample from the population

Question 12

Margin of Error

Answer 12

Expected amount of random variation in a statistic; often defined for 95% confidence

Key to the margin of error - When we use a probability sampling method, we can make claims abt how often the sample result would fall within a certain distance from the unknown population value by chance alone

Question 13

Random Assignment

Answer 13

Using a probability-based method to divide a sample into treatment groups

Tends to balance out all the variables

Critical to experimentation bc if the only difference between two groups is the independent variable, we can infer the independent variable is the cause of any observable difference

Question 14

Random Sampling/Assignment

Answer 14

Sampling - paramount to generalizing results from our sample to a larger population

Assignment - key to drawing cause-and-effect conclusions

Probability models help us assess how much random variation we can expect in our results in order to determine whether our results could happen by chance alone & to estimate a margin of error

Question 15

Operational Definitions

Answer 15

How researchers specifically measure a concept

Psychologists measure many abstract concepts, such as happiness/intelligence, by beginning w operational definitions of the concepts

Question 16

Independent Variable

Answer 16

Variable the researcher manipulates and controls in an experiment

Cause

Question 17

Dependent Variable

Answer 17

Variable the researcher measures but does not manipulate in an experiment

Effect

Question 18

Confounds

Answer 18

Things that could undermine your ability to draw casual inferences

Expectations that can influence you in a study

Ex. placebo effect, participant demand (participants try to behave in a way they think the experimenter wants them to), experimenter observation

Question 19

Placebo Effect

Answer 19

sometimes a person just knowing that he or she is receiving special treatment or something new is enough to actually cause changes in behaviour or perception

Question 19

Double-Blind Procedure

Answer 19

Neither the participant nor the experimenter knows which condition the participant is in - don’t know what’s going on

Because both parties are “blind” to the condition, neither willff be able to behave in a way that introduces a confound

Question 20

Correlational Research

Answer 20

When scientists passively observe and measure phenomena - we do not intervene/change behaviour; we identify patterns of relationships but typically can’t infer what causes what; can only examine TWO variables at a time

Question 21

Correlation

Answer 21

Measures the association between two variables, or how they go together

CORRELATION DOES NOT MEAN CAUSATION

Question 22

Correlation Coefficient

Answer 22

Association between two variables can be summarized statistically using the CC (r); provides information abt the direction & strength of the association between two variables

Positive correlation - two variables go up/down together in a scatterplot - dots form a pattern that extends from bottom left to upper right - r value indicated by a POS number

Negative correlation - two variables move in opposite directions (one up one down) - r value indicated by a negative number

Strength of a correlation: WEAK - has to do w how well the two variables align - many exceptions; low absolute value close to 0 STRONG - few exceptions; tighter dots; high absolute value

Question 23

Qualitative Designs

Answer 23

Participant observation, case studies, narrative analysis

Allow us to investigate harder to study topics that we can’t experimentally manipulate

Participant Observation - involves researcher embedding them self into a group in order to study its dynamics; typically aware that a researcher is aware to study them

Case Study - involves an intensive examination of specific individuals or specific contexts - Freud did this a lot; brain injuries (round of tests)

Narrative Analysis - centres around the study of stories/personal accounts of people, groups, or cultures; analyze the themes, structure, and dialogue of each person’s narrative - examine people’s personal testimonies in order to learn more abt the psychology of those individuals/groups; allows researcher not only to study WHAT the participant says, but HOW; studying how perspectives are conveyed

Question 24

Quasi-expiremental design

Answer 24

An experiment that does not require random assignment to conditions - rely on existing group memberships; treat these as the independent variables even though we don’t assign people to the conditions and don’t manipulate the variables - casual inference is more difficult

Ex. married people might differ on a variety of characteristics from unmarried people; if we find married participants are happier than single participants, it’ll be hard to say marriage causes happiness bc the married might have already been happier than people who remained single

Random assignment is what makes experimental designs stronger, while quasi-experiments are more like observing things as they already are.

Question 25

Longitudinal study

Answer 25

A study that follows the same group of individuals over time

ex. 20,000 Germans for two decades - psychologist Rich Lucas able to determine that people who end up getting married indeed start off a bit happier than their peers who never marry

Longit studies like this provide valuable evidence for testing many theories in psych, but they can be costly, especially if they follow many people for years

Question 26

Surveys

Answer 26

Way of gathering information using old-fashioned questionnaires/the Internet - can reach a larger number of participants at a much lower cost; can be used for correlational and experimental research

Question 27

Internal Validity

Answer 27

The degree to which a cause-effect relationship between two variables has been unambiguously established

Question 28

External Validity

Answer 28

The degree to which a finding generalizes from the specific sample and context of a study to some larger population and broader settings

Question 29

Ecological Validity

Answer 29

The degree to which a study finding has been obtained under conditions that are typical for what happens in everyday life

Question 30

Field Studies

Answer 30

In order to make claims abt human behaviour that apply across populations/environments, researchers complement traditional lab research w field research where the psychological. lab is brought to participants

Allow for the important test of how psychological variables and processes of interest “behave” under real-world circumstances (what ACC does happen rather than what CAN happen); can facilitate “downstream” operationalizations of constructs that measure life out comes of interest DIRECTLY rather than indirectly

Question 31

Research Methods for Studying Daily Life

Answer 31

1. Studying Daily Experiences - collect in the moment self-report data directly from people as they go about their daily lives; asking participants repeatedly over a period of time to report on current thoughts/feelings; location, social environment, activity, experiences; gold standard for studying daily life; allowed researchers to do research that’s more externally valid/more generalizable to real life than the traditional lab experiment
2. Studying Daily Behaviour - experience sampling used (ex. daily social interactions, activities); equip participants w a portable audio recorder EAR programmed to periodically record brief snippets of ambient sounds - recorder provides researchers w a series of sound bites that, together, amount to an acoustic diary of participants’ days; naturalistic observation can be used to study objective aspects of daily behaviour/how it can yield findings quite different from other methods; time-lapse photography, analyzed personal spaces and garbage
3. Studying Daily Physiology - researchers interested in how our bodies respond to fluctuating demands of our lives; ambulatory physical monitoring (monitoring physiological reactions as people go abt their daily lives); ambulatory assessment of hormones; researchers can use ambulatory physiological monitoring to study how the little experiences in our lives leave objective, measurable traces in our bodily systems
4. Studying Online Behaviour - how people act/interact w others on internet; researchers beginning to think of virtual behaviour as serious as “actual” behaviour and seek to make it a legit target of their investigations; study virtual language behaviour; bound to change social science
5. Smartphone Psychology - what’s next; smartphones will become devices for scientific data collection/intervention; immense potential for data collection also brings w it big new challenges for researchers (e.g., privacy protection, data analysis, synthesis); collecting usage data

Question 32

Experience-Sampling method

Answer 32

Methodology where participants report on their momentary thoughts, feelings, and behaviours at different points in time over course of a day

Question 33

Ecological Momentary Assessment

Answer 33

An overarching term to describe methodologies that repeatedly sample participants’ real world experiences, behaviour, & physiology in real time

Question 34

Diary Method

Answer 34

Methodology where participants complete a questionnaire abt their thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of the day at the end of the day

Question 35

Day Reconstruction Method (DRM)

Answer 35

Methodology where participants describe their experiences & behaviour of a given day retrospectively upon a systematic reconstruction on the following day

Developed to obtain info abt a person’s daily experiences w/o going thru the burden of collecting momentary experience-sampling data; reporting on a given day after engaging in a systematic, experiential reconstruction of the day on the FOLLOWING day

Question 36

Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)

Answer 36

Methodology where participants wear a small, portable audio recorder that intermittently records snippets of ambient sounds around them

Question 37

White Coat Hypertension

Answer 37

Phenomenon in which patients exhibit elevated blood pressure in the hospital or doctor’s office but not in their everyday lives

Question 38

Ambulatory Assessment

Answer 38

Overarching term to describe methodologies that assess the behaviour, physiology, experience, & environments of humans in naturalistic settings

Question 39

Linguistic Analyses

Answer 39

A quantitative text analysis methodology that automatically extracts grammatical and psychological information from a text by counting word frequencies

Question 40

Full-Cycle Psychology

Answer 40

Scientific approach whereby researchers start w an observational field study to identify an effect in the real world; then followup w lab experimentation to verify effect & isolate causal mechanisms; return to field research to corroborate experimental findings

Dynamic give-and-take between lab and field research