Notes

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Generating an aim and hypothesis

Aim - Gives the research a clear focus

Hypothesis - A specific statement or prediction about the outcome of the experiment

Null hypothesis - A statement saying that there will not be a difference/relationship between the two variables

Correlational study - An investigation into the possible association of two variables

Advantage of null hypotheses is that if you can't prove your experimental hypothesis you can disprove your null hypothesis

Directional hypothesis - A hypothesis that shows which way an experiment will go by using words such as 'increase'

Non-directional hypothesis - The way an experiment will go is not predicted, it could go in either direction e.g. 'there will be a difference in ...'

Operationalising variables

Operationalising - The process of devising a way of measuring a variable

In a hypothesis, to operationalise it you would need to define the two variables e.g. if you said 'difference in memory' it would then become 'difference in the number of digits recalled

Reliability and validity

An aim of any investigation is to create results that can be replicated

Reliability - two or more measurements or observations of the same psychological event will be consistent with each other

Internal validity -