CDS 501 Week 1

• investigations ascribe to universal standards (scientific method)
• provides verified info
• cornerstone of experimental science 
• confirm deny info
• add to body of knowledge 
• always logical, predictable, sensible

• systematically build knowledge and test treatment efficacy (most important to us because we are evidence based)
• Impact policy and service delivery (create policies based on facts)
• Enhance understanding of daily clinical practice 
• Become a critical consumer of research lit (scrutinize research results)

Become a competent clinician (understand the evolution, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and case management)

Strategies that give knowledge of human behavior, experience, and/or environment, with logical, understandable, confirmable, and useful steps and data

Study of the foundations and nature of knowledge

• Tenacity: one holds firm beliefs because they've always known them to be true
• Authority: info from people around us who we hold in high esteem (authoritative producers of knowledge)
• Intuition: self evident assumptions based on experience (unquantifiable, pure reason)
• Inquiry: Guided by theory and hypothesis (most powerful and objective means to gain info)

The systematic, controlled, empirical, amoral, public, and critical investigation of relations between natural phenomena that is guided by theory and hypothesis 

Explain, predict, control cause and effect relationships

attempts to explain cause and effect relations

Knowledge must be gained through logical thought (Deductive Reasoning)

knowledge is gained through experience and evidence (Inductive Reasoning)

apply stats to examine the extent of cause and effect relations

• specific to general
• apply small group studies to general population

• general to specific 
• synthesize all of the information

• Logical (no speculation)
• Objective (no opinion)
• Understandable (approach explained)
• Confimable (method and results can be repeated)
• Useful (inform body of scientific knowledge)

• Order: not random
• Determinism: cause and effect
• Discoverability: answers questions

State, develop, examine a problem you can investigate objectively 

• 1. Define the problem 
• 2. Gather background info
• 3. Frame the hypothesis 
• 4. Select the research design 
• 5. Establish data collection procedures
• 6. Collect data
• 7. Analyze and interpret data 
• 8. Report results

Controlled environment under controlled conditions (Lab)

Field work 

**our practice, even in the controlled environment of the clinic

Contribute to knowledge without trying to solve a social/clinical problem 

• construct new theories and modify existing ones 
• generally done in lab

• interested in solving clinical/social problems
• has practical application

Descriptive: observe/examine differences, trends, relationships between factors through objective measurements  

Experimental: design study to examine cause and effect relations in controlled conditions

collect data by observing and measuring behavior/physical properties

Obtain as SLPs

• speech samples
• listener ratings
• survey/questionnaire responses
• test scores speaker sound pressure levels
• tongue strength and endurance 
• oto-acoustic emissions

• 1. Better understanding of the disorder (normal vs. abnormal) or better understanding of assessment and treatment 
• 2. Clinical Research - some aspect of the clinical process is studied (assessment, treatment, clinical specialty)

* Clinical research derives from applied approach

• statement on relationship between IV and DV 
• formal statement that predicts the outcome of a study

States that there is no difference between examined groups

**set out to reject the null hypothesis and prove a difference by applying tests of significance

• we don't want to bias ourselves/influence that the outcomes will be
• more expansive than general hypothesis

• 1 dependent variable (DV)
• 1 independent variable (IV)

more than 1 IV or DV

• range of values that poses mathematical properties
• ex) age, IQ, weight, height,

• Do not have mathematical properties 
• Assigned to categories that poses specific characteristic