Methods in Psychology (Chapter 2)

Scientific Method

  1. Generate a hypothesis
  1. Design and Conduct Experiments
  1. Gather Information
  1. Analyze data and formulate Conclusions.
  1. Identify the problem
  1. 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