Research methods

Freedom from coercion

Participants must not fell pressured, focused, or manipulated into taking part in the study, they should feel free to withdraw without consequence

Informed consent

Participants must be given enough info about the study to make an informed decision on weather or not to participate, understanding what will happen and potential risks

Limited deception

Avoid misleading participants about nature or purpose of the study, deception is only used when necessary to the study when it doesn’t cause harm

Adequate debriefing

Once completed participants must feel fully informed about true purpose of the study and any deception used, Ensure they leave without distress or confusion

Why learn about research methods?

Understand how to design conduct, and evaluate studies

Research question

Broad, open-ended questions

Hypotheses

A specific, testable prediction

Sampling

A smaller group of people selected to represent a larger population

Control group

The stable group receiving no intervention

Experimental group

The group receiving intervention

Operationalize

Turning abstract concepts into observable and measurable phenomena, this process often turns vague concepts and study them more efficiently

Independent variable

What researchers deliberately manipulates

Dependant variable

What they measure to see how it responds to those changes

Confounding variable

Those that affect other variables in a way that produces spurious or distorted associations between two variables

Spurious

False or misleading, connections that appear real but actually isn’t

Experimenter bias

When a researchers expectations or beliefs unintentionally influence the outcome of a study

Blind vs double blind

Blind - subjects do not know which group they are in

Double blind - neither subjects or researcher knows which group is which

Placebo

A treatment that has no properties

Placebo effect

People who took placebo instead of the active treatment reported to improve symptoms

Obecalp

Sugar pill used to trick participants into thinking they are receiving active treatment

Key difference between correlation and causation

Correlation does not imply causation, Just because two things are correlated (change together) doesnt mean one causes the other

Correlation

A statistical relationship between two variables, where they tend to change together

Causation

One event directly leads to the other, a change in one variable directly produces a change in the other