day 2

involves observing the natural flow of behavior in a natural setting

-no involvement

• -noninterference
• -emphasis on overall patterns
• -most useful when we know little of the phenomenon of interest
• -unable to shed light on casual relationships

-certain kinds of behavior are difficult to observe, because they occur rarely or in private

-it is confined to one particular group of people, one setting, one activity

-limited ability to test hypothesis or theories

-potential for bias

-studying a single indvidual or very small unique group of people

• -sometimes involves intervention by researcher to strucutre setting and observations
• *asking question
• *setting up situations or tasks

• -Positive relationship
• -negative relationship
• -no relationship

an increase in one variable is associated with an increase in the other

ex) increase of weather increase in violence

positive slope

increase in one variable while the other decreases


negative slope

an increase of one variable is not associated with an increase or decrease in the other


straight slope

• -measuring the direction and strength of a relationship between variables
• *must be 2 variables
• * variables must be measured consistently

-established relationships can be used to predict future events

-can study problems where it is difficult or unethical to manipulate variables

-efficient

correlation does not equal causation

3 possible causation

X caused Y, Y caused X, or 3rd variable caused both

-concerned with evaluating differences between existing groups

• -comparing two or more conditions
• * participants are randomly assigned
• *allow causal inferences to be made

- trying to find out if a variable is causally related to another variable

cause and the thing that is manipulated

effect and the thing that is measured 

participant group that receives treatment, intervention, etc.

participant group that is like experimental group in all respects except for the treatment

participants have an equal likelihood of being assing to our experimental and control groups

-can draw causal conclusions

-allows us to test specific hypothesis

hard to generalize to larger population

-not all hypothesis of interest can be tested in lab