Methods in Psychology (Chapter 2)
Scientific Method
- Generate a hypothesis
- Design and Conduct Experiments
- Gather Information
- Analyze data and formulate Conclusions.
- Identify the problem
- Restart the process
Key concepts
Statistical significance
Replication
Validity
ethical concerns
Sampling
Generalizability
Random Sampling
Convenience Sampling
External validity = how well the results of a study generalize to contexts besides those of the study itself
Internal validity = confidence that only the manipulated variable could have produced the results
Direct = use exactly the same measures and procedures
Conceptual =
Slightly vary the measures & procedures
Modify the experiment to also extend the findings
Or apply to diff samples
APPROACHES
Correlation = to describe and predict how variable are related
Experimental = an experiment is a research method that tests causal hypothesis by manipulating and measuring variables
Descriptives Methods
Surveys
Archival (notion from social psych)
Case Studies
Participant Observation
Naturalistic Observation
Dependent Variable :
- Hypothesized to be affected by manipulation of the independent variable
Independent variable :
- Hypothesized to be the cause of a particular outcome
- Variable that is manipulated
Control condition :
- Comparable to the experimental condition in every way but one
- Lacks the one ingredient hypothesized to produce the expected effect on the dependent variable.
- e.g. spending money on yourself (in the money/happiness example).
(control group is the group which is not going to get "messed with")
Experimental condition :
- spending money on others (in the money/ happiness example)
(experimental group is the group that gets "messed with")
Making sense of the data
Descriptive statistics = describes data
- includes information like:
- Central tendency (= a single point to describe the center of data) such as : the mean, the median, the mode( the most frequently observed measure score in a data set)
- and the frequency of certain demographics
Inferential statistics :
- determine whether there are real differences between the independent variable condition so that we can make inferences about the causal relationship between the elements
May be 3rd variable
correlation doesn't mean causation
Random Assignment
click to edit
same selection criteria applied to everyone
double blind