Psychology: Science Inquiry Skills

What is the Biopsychosocial model?

An approach used in the field of psychology to understand and explain behaviour using three domains:

• biological

• Psychological

• Social

What are the biological Factors that can affect someone’s psychological well-being?

• genetics

• Neurochemistry

• Hormones

• Brain structure

• Age

• Sex

• injury

• Medication/drugs

What are the psychological Factors that can affect someone’s psychological well-being?

• Attention

• learning

• emotions

• thinking

• attitude

• memory

• perception

• beliefs

• Coping stratagies

What are the Social Factors that can affect someone’s psychological well-being?

• Family background

• social support

• Education

• relationship

• Socioeconomic status

• Physical exercise

• Gender

What is a dependent variable?

The variable that is being measured

What is an Independant Variable

The variable that is being manipulates or changed between conditions

What is a controlled variable

What is being kept the same in or between experiments

What are the types of extraneous variables

extraneous variables are any other variable that influences the data apart from the independent variable

what are participant variables

a person’s individual characteristics

• Intelligence

• Personality

• Motivation

• emotional state

• Mental health

• Age

What are the Experimenter variables

Characteristic brought in by the experimenters

• Tiredness

• Mood

• sickness

• Attention

• bias

What are situational variables

outside / environmental influences

• temperature

• Background noise

• time of day

• Different equipment

What are the components of a good hypothesis

• shows the relationship between IV and DV

• mentions the population and where it was gathered

• The IV being manipulated

• The dependent variable being measured

What are the characteristics of an Experimental design

used to test whether one variable influences another (quantitative data)

• more scientific and controlled

• reseracher manipulates IV

• Participants are randomly allocated to conditions

• Often has a treatment group and a control group

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the experimental design

Advantages

• establishes causation

• can be replicated

• Random assignment avoids bias

Disadvantages

• Very artificial (low external validity)

• Can be unethical (puts people through uncomfortable and stressful situations)

• Can cause unnatural forced behaviour from participants

What are the characteristics of an Observational design

When psychologists find situations where a variable is already influencing the participants naturally, and measure behaviour (quantitative and qualitative)

• done when experimental design is unethical

• IV changes naturally

• Uses pre-existing group ( communities with the same thing in common

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Observational design

Advantages

• Allows you to study otherwise unethical or difficult to study topics

Disadvantages

• no causation ( can’t manipulate IV)

• No constant variables (not reliable)

• Results are open to extraneous variable

What are the characteristics of a qualitative data design

captures rich verbal data of people's thoughts, feelings, and opinions of their behaviour in real-world settings

• not observing a behaviour

• No hypothesis, just a general question

• produces qualitative data

What are the methods of the qualitative design

• focus groups

• Delphi technique

• Interview

• (also can be done with questionnaires)

What are focus groups

A group interview that obtains data through open-ended discussion

• conducted by a train facilitator

• Responses are recorded and analysed using content analysis

What are the advantages and disadvantages of focus groups

Advantages

• Gives rich, detailed data

• Easy and inexpensive

• Allows participants to bounce ideas

• useful for those with literacy disabilities

Disadvantages

• Lacks confidentiality

• Dominant participants stop people from sharing

• Participants may feel uncomfortable talking in front of others

what is the Delphi technique

a technique of collecting data where responses to open-ended questions are answered by experts

• Questions are sent to experts the collected and analysed

• A second set of questions is sent out

• Data is compared and analysed for similar themes, then more questions are sent out based on previous data

• The process is continued until consensus is reached or enough data is gathered

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Delphi techniques

Advantages

• cheap and easy

• No geographical limitations

• minimise group issues (no face-to-face)

Disadvantages

• forces consensus

• opinions may be weakened by not allowing for group discussion

What is an interview

can be

• unstructured with no set questions

• Structured with pre-set questions

• between the researcher and the participant

What are the advantages and disadvantages of an interview

Advantages

• People may feel more comfortable speaking one-on-one

• Interviewers can tailor questions and ask for elaboration

Disadvantages

• interviewer bias

• An interview may not ask the right questions to get data

• Pre-set questions don’t allow for elaboration or exploration of interesting information

What is Objective quantitative data and how is it collected

Numerical, factual and able to be confirmed as accurate

Physiological measures

• EEG (electrical activity or brain)

• MRI (activation of areas in brain)

• HR (heart rate)

Behaviour counts

• reaction time

• Number of errors made

What are the disadvantages and advantages of Objective quantitative data

Advantages

• free of subjectivity and bias

• allows researchers to draw conclusions

Disadvantages

• doesn’t allow for in-depth reasoning and elaboration behind participant response

What is subjective quantitative data and how is it collected

measured numerically, but thoughts and feelings are taken into consideration

observation: researchers record information about the behaviour they witness (tally)

Self-reports: responses to questions about participant ’ thoughts a feelings (questionnaires with rating scales 1-10 or Likert scales)

What are the advantages and disadvantages of subjective quantitative data

Advantages

• provides greater insight into beliefs, feelings, and opinions

Disadvantages

• observation subject to observer bias

• difficult to compare to other data

What is qualitative data and how is it collected

data that is always subjective and worded

collected via

• interviews

• focus groups

• Delphi technique

• open-ended questions

What is content analysis, and how does it work

used to organise qualitative data into themes

• find common themes

• Identify the frequency of themes

• summarise in a frequency table

What are the measures of central tendency and how do you calculate them

mean (average)- does not always give an accurate picture due to outliers

median (middle number)

Mode (most recurring number)

What are the measures of data spread

Range (highest no - lowest no.) if range is high = big spread and if range is low = small spread

Standard deviation(how spread the data is on average)

what does a high of low standard deviation mean

High SD means data is widely spread(less reliable and hypothesis is not supported)

Low SD means data is clustered closely (more reliable and hypothesis is supported)

When comparing data sets in terms of standard deviation, what is something to watch out for?

When comparing datasets set with a low SD is better

• If the two SD are higher than the difference between the means, the hypothesis is not supported

What is internal validity

Something has high internal validity if what is being tested is not being affected by other factors

what are the types of external validity

external validity: the extent and which your results can be generalised to other contexts

Ecological validity: the extent to which your results can be generalised to real-life situations (artificial)

Population validity: the extent to which your data can be generalised to other groups of people (representativeness)

What is reliability and how can you gain it?

if the experiment is repeated, you will get the same results

test and retest reliability: do the same test with same parameters again

Inter-observer reliability: observers scoring the same participants the same

how does sample size effect your results

Large sample size: more likely to reflect natural diversity in the population

Small sample size: more likely to contain bias in terms of demographics

• produces unreliable data

• difficult to draw conclusion

• won’t represent key interest groups

what are the demand characteristics

Good participant role: participants behave in a way that they think will be beneficial to the experimenter

Negative participant’s role: Participant attempts to derail the experiment to destroy credibility

How does sample representativeness affect your results

can be caused due to improper representation for gender, age, socioeconomic status or cultural groups

• weakens internal validity and produces data that lack external validity

what are the ethical considerations that psychologists have to implment

• informed consent

• deception

• voluntary participation

• confidentiality/ Anonymity

• right to withdraw

• professional conduct

• debriefing

What is informed consent, and what do participants need to be informed

Participants must give consent to participate i an experiment and must know

• the aim, nature and risk of the experiment

• their right to withdraw

• in a language they understand

How can informed consent be implemented?

researchers will provide an information sheet and receive written and signed consent from each participant

• children have to have their parents consent for them

• can only be breached when using deception

What is deception

What participants are not made fully aware of is the nature of an experiment to study the said misinformed portion of the experiment

Only used if it is the only way to get unbiased answers and there is a low risk of harm. Otherwise should be avoided

What is voluntary participation

Participation needs to be voluntary and not coerced or forced

• shouldn’t have negative consequences if refused

• needs to be assured that people aren’t participating due to pre-existing power relationships (boss/employee or teacher/student)

What is confidentiality/ anonmity

not recording any information that can be used to identify people. If this information is gathered, it should not be put in public reports

• numbers should be used when referring to participants

what is briefing / debriefing

Participants should be informed about the details of the procedure and offered counselling if needed

A debrief afterwards can be done after if using deception

What is professional conduct

Researchers must be professional when communicating with participants by

• using inclusive strategies

• understandable language

• Use welcoming body language

Researchers cannot fabricate any data or misrepresent results.

What are vulnerable groups

• those not legally able to give consent (children)

• Those with mental health issues

• people who speak a different language than the researcher

what are vulnerable groups at greater risk of

• not giving informed consent

• not being able to exercise the right to withdraw

• only participating because of their vulnerability

if researchers are using animals what must they do

• must minimise pain, distress, and discomfort

• Be knowledgeable of how to care for animals

• Ensure that the use of animals is justified

• if doing field research ensure that animals are disturbed as little as possible