Research Methods

Question 1

What are standardised procedures?

Answer 1

A set of procedures that are the same for all participants in order to be able to repeat the study. Each participant experiences the same thing in each condition otherwise results may vary.

Question 2

What are extraneous variables?

Answer 2

Any unwanted variable that might potentially affect the dependent variable and therefore obscure the results

Question 3

What is a confounding variable

Answer 3

An uncontrolled extraneous variable that exerts an unwanted effect on the results. We then cannot be sure on cause and effect of results.

Question 4

What is meant by ecological validity?

Answer 4

External validity about a place. Findings can be generalised from the research setting to other settings.

Question 5

What is meant by population validity?

Answer 5

Findings can be generalised to people different from the original sample. It is a type of external validity.

Question 6

What is meant by historical validity?

Answer 6

A type of external validity referring to time. Findings apply across different time period. Can the findings remain valid in different time periods?

Question 7

What is the difference between a directional and a non-directional hypothesis?

Answer 7

Directional – leaning to one a specific outcome. states the direction between the conditions
Non-directional – states that there is a difference between the conditions without stating the direction of the difference.

Question 8

What is a pilot study?

Answer 8

A small scale trial run done before the real research to find a resolve issues before conducting the full study

Question 9

What is a confederate?

Answer 9

A person instructed by the researcher on how they need to act. According to participants they believe the confederate is a participant also.

Question 10

Name the three types of experimental design

Answer 10

Repeated measures, independent groups, matched pairs design

Question 11

What happens in a repeated measure design?

Answer 11

Participants take part in all conditions

Question 12

What happens in an independent group’s design?

Answer 12

Participants are split into different groups representing the different levels of the IV to complete the task under different conditions

Question 13

What are matched pair design?

Answer 13

Participants matched in terms of key variables such as age and IQ. one member of each pair is allocated to one of the conditions under test and the second person is allocated to the other condition. This is an attempt to control for the participant variables

Question 14

What is the limitation of repeated measures design? And how would you deal with this?

Answer 14

Order effects e.g practice effect (doing better on the second condition) or boredom effect (doing worse on the second condition)
They may also guess the hypothesis and alter their behaviour on the second one.
Counterbalancing - ABBA design.

Question 15

What is counterbalancing?

Answer 15

ABBA design used as a precaution against order effects.
Some of the participants do condition A then B, and some do B then A. It involves altering the order in which participants complete the different conditions.

Question 16

What are limitations of independent groups designs?

Answer 16

•Participant variables like individual differences are less controlled which introduces more variation due to extremely variables and may even introduce a confounding variable
•more participants are needed than in a repeated measure design because they are two separate groups

Question 17

How can we deal with the limitations of independent groups?

Answer 17

Randomly allocate participants to distribute the participant variables that might otherwise influence the results. this can be decided by tossing a coin for example.

Question 18

Give a strength of independent groups design

Answer 18

Reduces order effects because participants only take part in one condition their performance in the one condition will not influence their performance in another.

Question 19

Give one strength of repeated measures design

Answer 19

No participant variables can affect results so higher validity
Fewer participants needed so less time spent on recruitment

Question 20

What is a limitation of match pairs design?

Answer 20

Time-consuming to find sufficient participants matched on key variables
Matching is always imperfect and there may be variables that are missed . Matching is never perfect.

Question 21

How may you deal with the time-consuming limitation on match pairs design?

Answer 21

Restrict the number of variables to match participants on

Question 22

One strength of matched pairs design

Answer 22

Participant variables are controlled to reduce extraneous participant variables

Question 23

What is a field experiment?

Answer 23

An experiment conducted in the participants usual environment and not controlled environment and the IV is manipulated by the experimenter.

Question 24

What is a laboratory experiment?

Answer 24

An experiment conducted in a controlled environment where the experimenter controls the IV and records the effect of the DV while maintaining strict control of extraneous variables.

Question 25

What is cause-and-effect?

Answer 25

The manipulation of the IV and observing consequence changes in the DV.

Question 26

Strengths of lab experiment

Answer 26

• good control of the IV makes experiments high in internal validity so more easily replicated, meaning you can do it again to check the same effect occur as many times this makes it more reliable. • more certainty of cause and effect

Question 27

Limitation of lab experiments

Answer 27

Lack generalisability. The lab environment is artificial and not like everyday life •demand characteristics – the lab environments may influence people to think how they should be behaving/looking for clues. They end up behaving artificially and not naturally so this is a threat to validity.

Question 28

Limitation of field experiment

Answer 28

Ethical issues – if participants do not know they are taking part of the study they cannot have the right to withdraw or fully give informed consent. Loss of control on EVs and CVs so difficult to establish cause and effect.

Question 29

What are demand characteristics?

Answer 29

Clues that make participants aware of the aims of a study, so they end up behaving how they think is expected so is no longer natural which is a threat to validity.

Question 30

What are investigator effects?

Answer 30

Anything researcher unintentionally does that has an effect on influencing participants behaviour that then affects the outcome of the study

Question 31

What is the difference between a population and a sample?

Answer 31

A population is a group of people with the character characteristics that the researcher is interested in from which the sample is drawn. The sample is the selected participants from the population that is intended to produce a representative group.

Question 32

What is a natural experiment?

Answer 32

The researcher has no control over the IV and cannot change it. Something else causes it to vary. The DV may be naturally occurring or devised by the experimenter

Question 33

What is a quasi-experiment?

Answer 33

The IV is based on an existing difference between people. And both the IV and DV are naturally occurring

Question 34

What is the strength of using natural experiments?

Answer 34

- high external validity as they involve the study of real world issues - provide opportunities for research that may not otherwise be undertaken for practical reasons

Question 35

Limitations of natural or quasi experiments (2)

Answer 35

•doubts over cause and effect - lack of control over IV so we cannot be certain that it caused the changes in the DV due to possible confounding variables. •may be pre-existing uncontrolled differences that act as confounding variables so sample may be biased. Participants cannot be randomly allocated.

Question 36

How can investigator effects be reduced?

Answer 36

Standardised instructions and double blind procedures. Separate research can be carried out by two or more researchers and comparison between the two. (Inter-observer reliability)

Question 37

What are advantages of open questions?

Answer 37

Detailed information (qualitative information) can be given as respondents can expand on their answers. New insights can be given too that provide opportunities to further explore.

Question 38

What are disadvantages of open questions?

Answer 38

Not all participants feel so vocal with expressing their opinions so might not capture everything. Qualitative data may be more difficult to compare and summarise BECAUSE OF VARIETY.

Question 39

What are advantages of closed questions?

Answer 39

Limited range of answers so can produce quantitative data that can be easier to analyse and produce findings.

Question 40

What are disadvantages of closed questions?

Answer 40

Participants are forced to answer in a certain way data may lack validity.

Question 41

What is debriefing and why is it important?

Answer 41

Debriefing is post-research interview to informs participants of the true nature of the study. It is important to restore them to their original state and may be used to gain useful feedback.

Question 42

What are correlations?

Answer 42

When a researcher/psychologist is looking for a relationship between two co-variables. They look for similarities.

Question 43

What is a correlation coefficient?

Answer 43

A number between -1 and +1 that tell us how closely the co-variables in a correlational analysis are associated.

Question 44

What is a limitation of correlations?

Answer 44

No conclusion can be made on cause and effect, can only tell us how they are related not why. Due to lack of experimental manipulation and control.

Question 45

What is a case study

Answer 45

A detailed study of a single institution, individual or event. They provide rich data but are hard to generalise from.

Question 46

What is content analysis?

Answer 46

A form of indirect observation in which artefacts people produce are analysed.

Question 47

What is meta analysis?

Answer 47

A researcher combines findings from similar studies and produce a statistic to represent the overall effect.

Question 48

Meta analysis systematic review

Answer 48

Findings from carefully selected studies are summarised to give knowledge in a particular area.

Question 49

Strength of meta analysis

Answer 49

Combining results from different studies increases sample size which means findings can be generalised and you’ll end up with high population validity.

Question 50

Limitation of meta analysis

Answer 50

Research designs in the studies selected may vary so they are not easily comparable. Combining then may obscure any differences so conclusions are not always valid.

Question 51

Strengths of a case study (give 2)

Answer 51

• richness and depth of analysis • useful for investigating rare cases that wouldn’t be ethical to generate experimentally

Question 52

Strength of content analysis

Answer 52

High ecological validity because it’s on tangible evidence.

Question 53

Limitation of content analysis

Answer 53

Observer bias reduces validity of the findings as observers may interpret data differently.

Question 54

What are measures of central tendency?

Answer 54

Statistic that provide information on a typical value in a data set. Mean, median, mode.

Question 55

What are measures of dispersion?

Answer 55

Statistics that provide information about how spread out a set of data are. Range, standard deviation.

Question 56

What is a nominal level of measurement

Answer 56

Simply counting something

Question 57

Evaluation of the mean

Answer 57

• + most sensitive and it uses all values in the data set • - can be distorted by extreme values in the set, and so misrepresent the data set.

Question 58

Evaluation of the median

Answer 58

•+ unaffected by extreme scores • - may not be representative as it doesn’t use all values in the set

Question 59

Evaluation of the mode

Answer 59

• + unaffected by extreme values , data used can be nominal • - not useful when there’s multiple modes.

Question 60

Evaluation of the range

Answer 60

• + easy to calculate • - sensitive to distortion by extreme values. Doesn’t tell you how far away the data points are from the mean

Question 61

Evaluation of standard deviation and what is it

Answer 61

It is a measure of how much scores in a data set differ from the mean + a precise measurement as it uses all values in the data set - May conceal some of the characteristics like extreme values

Question 62

Limitations of a case study (2)

Answer 62

•problems with establishing cause and effect. No control against which to make comparisons. •potentially unreliable recollection of past events. We are using old data that may not be accurate. Low generalisability to other individuals due to the small sample size

Question 63

Strength of a field experiment

Answer 63

Higher mundane realism as the environment is more natural. Behaviour produced may be more valid. (As participants may be unaware they are being studied)

Question 64

What is a normal distribution?

Answer 64

Symmetrical around the mean with most scores being close to it, peak in the middle where the mean value is.

Question 65

What is the shape of a normal distribution curve?

Answer 65

Bell curve, symmetrical.

Question 66

Describe how data is layed out in a normal distribution curve.

Answer 66

Most scores will fall into the central part of the bell curve. Extreme outliers will fall within the tail ends.

Question 67

What is a skewed distribution?

Answer 67

They describe a graph curve where one tail is longer than the other. There is asymmetry. The two halves do not mirror each other because the data is not distributed equally.

Question 68

Which measure of central tendency is most affected by a skewed distribution?

Answer 68

The mean as it takes all scores in the data set.

Question 69

Describe a positive skew.

Answer 69

Most values are found to the left giving a long tail on the right. Mode on the left, then median, then mean.

Question 70

Describe a negative skew.

Answer 70

Most of the values are found to the right side of the graph giving a long tail on the left. Mode on the right, then median, then mean.

Question 71

Two strengths of correlations

Answer 71

• Not Time consuming as no experiment being carried out so no need for experimental conditions to manipulations of variables - so quick and economical • can be used as starting points in experimental research assessing possible patterns before begging the study - allows for an insight to help hypothesis be made.