psychology unit 2 research methods

alevel wjec

What is an aim?

A general statement of what the researcher intends to investigate

What is a confounding variable?

a factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment

What does debriefing mean?

To inform the participants of the true nature of the study and the restore them to the same state as they were beforehand. Avoids ethical issues

what is a DV?

The variable you measure

What is an ethical issue?

Concern questions of right of wrong. Does the benefits of the experiment outweigh the negatives

What is an experiment?

A research method where a casual conclusions can be drawn because of a manipulated on an IV to observe the effect on the DV

What is a hypothesis?

A hypothesis is a statement that can be tested

What is an IV?

variable that is manipulated

What does the term operationalise mean?

Ensuring that the variables are in a form that can be easily tested

What is a standardised procedures?

procedures that are the same for all ppts in order to be able to repeat the study.

What is valid consent?

ppts must be given comprehensive information concerning the nature and purpose of the research and their role in it, in order that they can make an informed decision about whether to participate.

What is external validity?

the degree to which the investigator can extend or generalize a study's results to other subjects and situations. (repeatability)

What is an extraneous variable?

a variable other than the IV that could cause changes in the value of the DV. (doesn't act as the IV like confounding variables)

What is internal validity?

The degree to which an observed effect was due to the experiment manipulation not confounding/extraneous variables

What is mundane realism?

refers to how a study mirrors the real world

What does reliability mean?

consistency (can the research be carried out multiply times and get the same results)

What does validity mean?

accuracy/legitimacy. does it represent reality

What does split half method mean?

the questions are split in half and the same ppts answer one set some time before the second set. If the scores of each half are similar, it is said the the test is reliable

What does inter-rated/observer reliability mean?

People are notorious for their inconsistency. We are easily distracted, we get tired of doing repetitive tasks. Using 2 observers makes the results more reliable, IF THEY'RE FINDINGS ARE SIMILAR.

What does test-retest mean?

redoing the experiment, if the results are similar there is a high external validity.

However, risks observer bias.

What is a questionnaire?

a series of written questions a researcher presents to subjects

Strengths of questionnaires

+ Cost effective

+ Can gather large amounts of data quickly

+ Can be completed without the researcher being present

Weaknesses of questionnaires

- Can produce response bias

- Ppts may misunderstand the question or read it incorrectly

- Demand Characteristics / Social Desirability may occur

What does qualitative data mean?

literature based data

What does quantitative data mean?

numerical based data

Strengths of qualitative data

+Rich in detail

+Allows for in-depth analyse

Weaknesses of qualitative data

- difficult to analyse

-difficult to compare people or groups

Strength of quantitative data

+easier to analyse

+Easier to compare groups/people

Weaknesses of quantitative data

- not detailed

- potentially superficial

Opened questionnaires

+ allows justification

+ generates qualitative data

Closed questionnaires

+ Restricted respondent to a predetermined set responses

+ Generate quantitative data

What is an interview?

one-to-one conversation with propose

What is a structured interview?

an interview in which a set of standardised questions having an established set of answers is used

What is a unstructured interview?

No preset questions which allows the interviewer to explore the areas further with questions arising from the respondents answer

Strengths of structured interviews

+Allowed more targeted questioning and allows some questions to produce quantitative data.

Weaknesses of structured interviews

- doesn't allow the researchers to pick up on interesting comments

- time-consuming as they interview ppt individually and then that data in transcribed and analysed.

Strengths of unstructured interviews

+ More flexible in how the questions are asked

+ Allows for a sensitive approach to issues that is lacking other methods

Weaknesses of unstructured interviews

- Hard to standardise so hard to generalise

- Very time consuming as analysing the results will take a very long time

What is correlation?

relationship between two variables

What is a correlation coefficient?

A numerical index of the degree of relationship between two variables.

significant correlation

A stats to mean that if the results are big enough not to ignore, we accept the experiment hypothesis and reject the null-hypothesis

Features of case studies

Focus on a sample of either one individual, group or organisation

They study that sample in-depth

A type of descriptive research where IV and DV are not used to test cause and effect

Methods used in case studies.

Unstructured and semi-structured interviews, observations and past records, medical histories; diaries etc.

Bowlby's study was essentially a series of case studies of children

uses of case studies

Atypical behaviour/conditions

Unusual situations,

Usually small samples as not many are affected

Give insight into how to help

What's going on 'normally' and prevention; give in-depth insight.

Strengths of case studies

- offer high levels of validity as they go into depth and give insight

- Allows researchers to study that event when it can't redo that circumstance due to ethical issues

- Learn about issues not yet understood

- Takes one to disprove a theory

Weaknesses of case studies

- difficult to generalise

- bias, if researchers get too involved they lose objectivity and misinterpret data

- difficult to id the cause and effect

-extraneous variables aren't controlled

What is content analysis?

- a type of research method

- used to quantify the content of different types of media

- content analysis summarises the content by counting various aspects of the content

Strengths of content analyse

- High ecological validity

- Findings can be easily replicated

- No ethical issues, as the people aren't being dealt with in person

weaknesses of content analysis

- observer bias as they are recording it

-- they chose what to record to fit their hypthesis

What is a pilot study?

A small-scale trial run of the actual investigation to spot any methodology issues

What is a confederates?

When the researcher has someone play a role in an experiment or other investigation e.g Milgram's the experimenter was a confederate

Weaknesses of Repeated measures

-Order effects (learning, fatigue)

-Demand characteristics

-Different tests may be needed

Methods of dealing with the disadvantages of repeated measures

two different tests - reduces practice effect

-- can be done by constructing a test of 40 items to test A and test B

cover story - reduce the changes of the ppts finding the true aim of the experiment

Disadvantage of independent groups

Participant variables are an issue (different abilities, characteristics of each ppts) as they could become confounding variables

More ppts are needed

Methods of dealing with the disadvantages of the independent groups

- Randomly allocate ppts to conditions

Disadvantages of Matched pairs

- time consuming as you have find people with the same characteristic (e.g IQ)

- no possible to control all ppts variables as you can only match on variables known to be relevant

Methods to deal with the disadvantages of the matched pairs

- restrict the number of variables to match

- conduct a pilot study to consider key variables

What is counterbalancing?

an experiment technique used to overcome order effects when using repeated measure, this ensures that each condition is tested first or second in equal amounts

What is an order effect?

in a repeated measure design, an extraneous variable arising from the order in which conditions are presented (practice and fatigue)

Way 1 of counterbalancing (AB or BA)

group 1 - A then B

Group 2 - B then A