Research Methods

Tendency to believe, after learning the outcome, that you knew all along.

We tend to think more than we do

Tendency for people to accept very general or vague characterizations of themselves and take them to be accurate.

• Has clear, practical applications. You can use it.
•    ex. research on drug addiction

Explores questions that you may be curious about, but not intended to be immediately used.

Expresses a relationship between two variables.

anything that can vary among participants in a study.

Whatever is being manipulated in the experiment.

Whatever is being measured in the experiment.

Factors that effect the dependent variable, that are not the independent.

• Explains what you mean in your hypothesis.
• Explains everything in your experiment.

• Identify the population you want to study.
• (Random Sample)

method of sampling from a population

• Looking to prove casual relationships
•    Cause = Effect

Once you have a random sample, randomly assigning them into two groups helps control for confounding variables.

ensure that experimental and control group are equivalent on some criterions.

• Some people may work harder when they know that they are participating in an experiment.
• Some may change their behavior.

Another confounding variable - not a conscious act

neither the participants nor the experimenters know who is receiving a particular treatment.

• Sometimes the act of taking a pill produces an effect if the person believes the pill is active

Placebo - like a sugar pill

• Correlation expresses a relationship between two variables.
• Does not show causation

• A statistical measure of the extent to which two factors relate to one another.
• (A number that measures the strength of a relationship)
• r.
•    ex. as more... more..
• Ranges from -1 to +1
• The relationship gets weaker the closer you get to zero.

• The variables go in the SAME direction.
•    ex. Studying + Grades

• The variables go in opposite directions
•     ex. Drugs + grades

Explains cause and effect relationships

• Most common type of study in psychology.
• Measures correlation

Watch subjects in their natural environment.

Recording results from our studies

Just describes set(s) of data.

• Summary of how often different sources occur within a sample of scores.
• Commonly used to categorize information.

Mean, median, mode

Mean, median, mode are all the same.

• Outliers skew distributions. 
•   
•   If group has one high score, the curve has a positive skew (contains more low scores)

• the variance of scores around the mean.
•   the higher the variance or standard direction, the more spread out the distribution is

A unit that measures the distance of one score from the mean.

Purpose is to discover whether the finding can be applied to the larger population from which the sample was collected.

IRR Internal Review Board

Both for humans and animals.

• No coercion - must be voluntary
• Informed consent
• Anonymity
• No significant risk
• Must be debrief