SPSS Survival Manual by Julie Pallant - textbook for SPSS https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003117452
Measuring Human Behaviour
How would you measure:
Stress? - self report, heart rate
Creativity? - responses to tricky questions
Sleep quality? - sleeping time, EEG
Attention span? - how long can you hold focus on a moving object
Some measures may be subjective rather than objective, such as measuring creativity.
Variability
Normal distribution forms a bell shaped curve with the majority in the middle around the average, and less around the edges - extremes
Causality
Co-variance: two aspects are actually rated to each other
Temporal precedence: a change in the IV happening before the change in DV
Elimination of confounds: no other variables are affecting the results
Questions to ask when looking at an association
Does this grouping make sense?
Is this difference meaningful?
What else might affect the DV?
Grouping Methods:
Experimental approaches allow to conclude causality, by contrast to correlational research.
Correlational research can not answer the following questions:
Does changing x cause changes in y?
Does changing your cause changes in x?
Are they both affected by z?
p-value: probability that the null hypothesis is true
Null Hypothesis: the claim that the effect being studied does not exist
Type 1 Error: claimed effect was there when it was not
Type 2 Error: missed an effect that was present
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) provides more precise conclusions compared to t-test