Flashcards
Ch. 2 Research Methods
Cards in this deck (36)
- 1Basic Research (aka basic science)explores questions that are really interesting to psychologists but have no immediate, real-world application.
- 2applied research (aka applied science)when the scientist has clear and practical reasons and applications for her study.
- 3cross-sectional study vs. longitudinal studyCross-Sectional: uses participants of different ages to compare how certain variables may change over the life span.
Longitudinal: examines one group of participants over a long period of time - 4validitythe test is valid or reliable
- 5reliabilityReliability refers to the extent to which a test or other instrument is consistent in its measures
- 6hindsight biasis the tendency to believe,once the outcome is already known that you would have forseen it even though its over you know the outcome you knew it all along
- 7—naturalistic observation: psychologists study behavior in "real settings" to see behavior occur in its most natural state. Goal is NOT to interfere or intervene.
Ex. Jane Goodall's study of the wild chimpanzees
- 8—Positive Correlation: when two variables go in the SAME direction
- 9—Negative correlation-here the two variables go in DIFFERENT directions.
- 10—scatterplot- a graph shows a cluster of dots that represent two variables
- 11research technique study one person in depth in hope of revealing universal principlesCase Study
Ex. Phineas Gage
H.M.
Genie Secret of a Wild Child
- 12—
- 13What kind of research method would I use if say I wanted to prove that eggs CAUSE gas?an experiment
- 14operational definitionsA detailed statement of the procedures or ways in which a researcher is going to conduct their experiment
- 15hypothesisan educated guess; a testable prediction
Ex. Eating lots of boiled eggs causes gas. - 16populationAll of the individuals in the group to which the study applies.
- 17samplethe small group of participants out of the total number available that a researcher studies
- 18random assignmentcommonly used experimental technique; researcher randomly assigns participants to experimental group vs. control group (any, many, miney, mo); helps ensure that the treatment group and the control group are the same before treatment
- 19Independent Variable (I.V.)in an experiment the variable that the researcher manipulates (controls)
- 20—Dependent variable "depends" on the dependent variable
- 21Dependent variable (D.V.)what is being measured in an experiment
- 22—a fake treatment or no treatment; given to the control group
- 23extraneous or confounding variablesConfounding variables are BAD and you do NOT want them in your experiment.
These variables are anything that causes changes in the dependent variable that is not the independent variable. For example if some of your subjects took Beano gas pills during the experiment. - 24single blind experimenttype of experiment in which the participants do NOT know if they are part of the experimental group
- 25double blind experimentneither the researcher or the participants know who is actually receiving the independent variable
- 26—Single blind experiment eliminates participant bias (aka Hawthorne effect)
Double blind experiment eliminates both participant & researcher bias.
- 27—our tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions & ignore contradictory evidence
- 28experiment bias aka researcher biastendency for researchers to selectively notice evidence that supports their hypothesis
- 29participant biasresponse bias occurs in a study when a participant responds in a certain way because they know they are being observed or they believe they know what the researcher wants
- 30Self-fulfilling prophecya belief that leads to its own fulfillment
- 31false consensus effectWhen we overestimate how much other people share our beliefs and behaviors
- 32meanthe average score
- 33medianarrange data (we'll use test scores for the example) from highest to lowest score, the score in the middle is the median score
- 34modethe most frequently occurring score
- 35normal curve (aka Bell Curve)
- 36standard deviationa measure of how much scores vary from the mean (average)