Wk2 Flashcards
Any phenomenon that can take on more than one value
Variable
What has a continuum of possible values?
Continuous variable
What type of variable is comprised of groupings or categories?
Categorical variable
What defines a variable in terms of the specific procedures used to produce it?
Operational
What is it called when every member of the population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate?
Random Sampling
What is it called when the population is divided into subgroups; participants are chosen to correlate with population percentages?
Stratified random sampling
What is it called when you can apply research results to the entire population?
Generalisability
What do you call a valid design?
Internal validity
What is external validity?
Research being applicable to situations outside of the laboratory.
What is it called when you assess the degree to which 2 variables are related?
Correlational research
What is a correlational coefficient?
The quantification of association between 2 variables, ranging from -1.0 to + 1.0 with 0 meaning two variables are unrelated.
If participants are exposed to a similar procedure as possible what is this procedure known as?
Standardised procedure
Quantitative research
Experiments/surveys that provide data that can be quantified, tabulated, summarised and analysed.
Qualitative research
Exploration of a research topic through methods such as interviews and case studies to gain a richer understanding of the relevant phenomena.
Descriptive research
Describes phenomena as it already exists without manipulation.
What is the variable that is being manipulated?
Independant variable
What is the variable that is being measured?
Dependent variable
What is it called when the sample is not representative of the population as a whole?
Sampling bias
If asking the same question several different ways yields the same result what is this called?
Internal consistency
If 2 different interviewers rate an individual on some dimension and give that person similar scores what is this known as?
Interrater reliability
What research method manipulates variables to assess cause and effect?
Experimental
What research method is an in-depth observation of a small number of cases?
Descriptive
What research method is an in-depth observation of a phenomenon as it occurs in nature?
Naturalistic observation
What research method asks people questions about their attitudes, behaviours etc?
Survey research
What are cofounding variables?
Two variables that are interconnected, cannot determine which one has influenced a dependent variable
What are cofounding variables?
Two variables that are interconnected, cannot determine which one has influenced a dependent variable
What is it called when the researcher influences participants to respond in a manner that is consistent with their hypothesis?
Experimenter expectancy
What is it called when higher scores on one variable are associated with higher scores on a second variable?
Positive correlation
What is it called when higher scores on one variable are associated with lower scores on a second variable?
Negative correlation
What is a scatterplot?
Shows the correlation between 2 variables
What are the 6 steps to conducting an experiment?
- Frame hypothesis
- Operationalise variables
- Develop standardised procedure.
- Select and assign participants.
- Apply statistical techniques to data
- Draw conclusions
What value shows statistical significance?
p= <0.05
What is a quasi-experiment?
Shares similar features of an experiment but do not allow as much control over all relevant variables and cannot provide certainty about cause and effect. Eg. Measure of the impact on memory in divorce.
What is it called when there are errors in measurement due to investigator seeing what they expect to see?
Researcher/observer bias
What are the 3 measures of central tendency?
Mean - Average of a set of scores
Median - Midpoint of scores when arranged from highest to lowest
Mode - Most frequently occurring score
What are measures of variability?
Degree of variation in a distribution of scores
What is the range?
Difference between the highest and lowest scores
What is standard deviation?
How much each score differs from the mean
What is it called when most scores fall in the middle of a bell curve?
normal distribution
What are inferential statistics?
How confident we can be making inferences about a population based on the sample
What indicates the magnitude of the experimental effect or strength of the relationship?
Effect size
What is a chi-square test?
It is used if both IV and DV are categorical to compare observed data with the results that would be expected by chance.
What is a t-test?
It compares the mean scores of 2 groups
What is ANOVA
An analysis of variance can be used to compare the mean of 2 or more groups assessing the likelihood that differences in means among groups occurred by chance.
What is the method of organising data to show how frequently participants received each of the possible scores?
A frequency distribution
What is a histogram?
It plots ranges of scores along the x axis and frequency of scores on the y axis.
Although I ran an elegant study which produced significant differences between groups in my lab, my results don’t actually predict what people do in the real world. My study is very low in:
External validity
An experiment compares student GPAs between those who eat breakfast and those who don’t. After the experiment, it is found that those who eat breakfast in the cafeteria are also listening to music. Not only do the two groups differ in terms of who has breakfast, but they also differ in terms of who hears the music. Music is a:
Possible confounding variable
What kind of design is useful if experimentation is impractical and takes advantage of natural groups as they exist in nature?
Quasi-experiment
If I perform some statistics on the data that I have gathered, and those statistics merely summarise the findings, I must have used:
Descriptive statistics
When is deception considered useful?
When demand characteristics would influence the results of an important study
