Psychology > Research Methods year2 > Flashcards

Research Methods year2 Flashcards

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1
Q

What is a correlation?

A

Meaures the relationship/association between 2 co-variables.

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2
Q

What is a correlation coefficient?

A

Represents the direction and strength of a relationship between co-variables.

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3
Q

What does a correlation coefficient of +1 mean?

A

Perfect positive correlation.

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4
Q

What does a correlation coefficient of -1 mean?

A

Perfect negative correlation.

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5
Q

What is a case study?

A

An in depth investigation, description and analysis of a single individual, group, instiution or event. Involves the production of qualitative data. Person may also be subject to experimental testing which may produce quantitative data.
They are longitudinal studies.

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6
Q

What sort of things to case studies investigate?

A

Unusual individuals or events e.g a person with a rare disorder.

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7
Q

What is a case history?

A

Combination of interviews, questionnaires, observations about the individual.

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8
Q

What are the strengths of case studies?

A
  • Offer rich, detailed insights that may shed light on very unusual and atyptical forms of behaviour. Less superficial that questionnaire data.
  • May contribute to our understanding of typical functioning e.g HM case study demonstrated typical memory processing (existence of separate stores in STM and LTM)
  • May generate hypotheses for future study and one solidarity, contradictory instance may lead to the revison of an entire theory.
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9
Q

What are the limitations of case studies?

A
  • Hard to generalise findings with such a small sample size.
  • Infomation that makes it into the final report is based on the subjective selection and interpretation of the researcher.
  • Personal accounts from the participants and their friends and family may be inaccurate and prone to memory decay especially if childhood stories are being told, making the evidence lack validity.
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10
Q

What is content analysis?

A

Observational research in which behaviour is studied indirectly by examining the communications that people produce in TV, texts and films.

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11
Q

What is coding?

A

Categorise large data sets into meaningful units. e.g counting the number of times a particular word appears in the text to form a piece of quantitative data.

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12
Q

What is thematic anaylsis?

A

A qualitative approach to analysis that involves identifying recurrent implicit or explicit themes in the data

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13
Q

What are the strengths of a content analysis?

A
  • Can circumnavigate many ethical issues associated with psychological research as the material being studied already exists in the public domain.
  • High external validity, may access data of a sensitive nature provided the author consents for it’s use.
  • Can produce qualitative and quantitative data.
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14
Q

What are the limitations of a content analysis?

A
  • People tend to be studied indirectly so the communications they produce are usually analysed outside of the context in which they occured.
  • There is a danger that the researchers may attribute opinions and motivations to the speaker or writer that were not intended originally.
  • May suffer from lack of objectivity especially where more descriptive forms of thematic analysis are employed.
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15
Q

What is reliability?

A

Refers to how consistent psychological tests or observations, if they produce the same result each time something is tested, it is considered reliable.

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16
Q

What is test retest reliability?

A

A method of assessing the reliability of a questionnaire or psychological test. Administering the same test or questionnaire to the same person on different occasions, if the test or questionnaire is reliable then the results obtained should be the same.

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17
Q

What should be ensured when assessing reliability using test retest?

A

Must be sufficient time between the test and retest to ensure the participants cannot recall their answers but not so long that their attitudes/opinions/abilities may have changed.

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18
Q

How do you ensure the reliability of the measuring instrument is good when using test retest?

A

Correlate the 2 sets of scores, if the correlation is significant (positive) then the reliability of the measuring instrument is good.

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19
Q

What is inter observer reliability?

A

Extent to which there is agreement between 2 or more observers involved in observations of a behaviour.

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20
Q

How do you establish inter observer reliability?

A

A pilot study of an observation in order to check that observers are applying behavioural categories in the same way or a comparison may be reported at the end of the study.
Data should be correlated to assess it’s reliability.

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21
Q

How do you measure reliability?

A

Measured using a correlational analysis.
correlation coefficient should exceed +0.80 for reliability.

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22
Q

How do you improve reliability of questionnaires?

A

Remove or rewrite questions that are complex, ambiguous and may be interpreted differently by the same person on different occasions.
Replace open questions with closed fixed choice alternatives which may be less ambiguous.

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23
Q

How do you improve reliability of interviews?

A

Use the same interviewer each time
If this can’t happen all interviewers must be properly trained so that for example one isn’t asking too many questions that are too leading or ambiguous.
This is more easily avoided in structured interviews, unstructured interviews are less likely to be reliable.

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24
Q

How do you improve the reliability of observations?

A

Make sure the behavioural categories have been operationalised and they are measurable and obvious.
Categories should also not overlap (e.g hugging and cuddling) and all possible behaviours should be covered on the checklist.
If this is not the case, different observers have to make their own judgements of what to record where and may well end up with differing and inconsistent records.
Train observers in using behavioural categories and they may wish to discuss their decisions with each other so they can apply their categories more consistently.

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25
How do you improve the reliability of an experiment?
Procedure must be consistent each time so therefore must be standardised to allow comparison between different participants and results from different studies.
26
What is validity?
Extent to which an observed effect is genuine - whether it measures what it intends to measure and can it be generalised beyond the research setting.
27
What is internal validity?
Whether the effects observed in an experiment are due to manipulation of the independent variable and not some other factor.
28
What is a major threat to internal validity?
If participants respond to demand characteristics and act in a way they think is expected.
29
What is external validity?
The extent to which findings can be generalised to other people, settings and situations.
30
What is ecological validity?
A type of external validity concerning generalising findings from a study to other settings especially everyday life. The task used to measure the dependent variable must have high mundane realism for the findings to be ecologically valid.
31
What is temporal validity?
Extent to which findings from a research study can be generalised to other historical times and eras.
32
What is face validity?
Whether a test, scale or measure appears on the face of it to measure what it is supposed to measure. Can be determined by eyeballing the measuring instrument or passing it by an expert to check.
33
What is concurrent validity?
Whether the results obtained are very close to or match those obtained on another recognised and well established test.
34
How do you improve the validity of experiments?
- Use a control group to ensure that changes in the dependent variable are due to the effect of the independent variable. - Standardise the procedures and use single or double blind trials to minimise impact of participant reactivity and investigator effects. -
35
How do you improve the validity of questionnaires?
Use a lie scale within the questions in order to assess the consistency of a respondents response and control for effects of social desirability bias. Assure all respondents all data will remain anonymous.
36
How do you improve the validity of observations?
Research may produce findings with high ecological validity as there may be minimal intervention by the researcher. Ensure behavioural categories are not too broad overlapping, or ambiguous.
37
Why does qualitative research have a higher ecological validity than quantitative?
Depth and detail associated with case studies and interviews so better able to reflect a participant's reality.
38
What is interpretive validity?
Extent to which the researchers interpretations of an event matches that of the participants. Established in qualittaive research inclusion of direct quotes from participants in report.
39
What is triangulation?
Use of a number of different sources as evidence e.g data compiled through interviews with friends and family, personal diaries, observations etc.
40
What does the abstract section of a scientific report include?
Short summary that includes the key details of the report: the aims/hypotheses, method/procedure, results and conclusions.
41
What does the introduction of a scientific report include?
Literature review of the general area of research detailing relevent theories, concepts and studies. Should start broadly and get more specific until the aims and hypotheses are presented.
42
What is the first section of the method?
Design - State the design, e.g indepedent groups, naturalistic observation etc and reasons for choice.
43
What is the second section of the method?
Sample - Info related to the people involved in the study, eg how many, biographical/demographic info, sampling method and target population.
44
What is the third section of the method?
Apparatus/materials - Details of any materials used.
45
What is the fourth section of the method?
Procedure - recipe style list of everything that happened in the investigation from start to end, including briefing and debriefing.
46
What is the fifth section of the method?
Ethics - details of how ethical issues were addressed.
47
What does the results section of a scientific report include?
Summarise the key findings. Including descriptive and inferential statistics
48
What does the discussion section of a scientific report include?
Consideration of what the results tell us in terms of wider psychological theory. Discuss the limitations and how they might be addressed in a future study Consider the wider implications of the study, e.g real world applications or contributions to existing knowledge in the field.
49
What is the format of a journal reference?
- Author - Date - Article title - Journal name - Volume(Issue) - Page numbers
50
What is the format of a book reference?
- Author - Date - Book title - Place of publication - Publisher
51
What are the conditions needed for Chi Squared?
- Test of difference or correlation - Unrelated design - Nominal data
52
What is the format of a website reference?
- Source - Date - Title - Weblink - Date accessed
53
How do you work our degrees of freedom for Chi Squared?
(number of rows-1)x(number of columns-1)
54
What are the conditions needed for the sign test?
- Test of difference - Related design - Nominal data
55
What are the conditions needed for Mann Whitney?
- Test of difference - Unrelated design - Ordinal data
56
What are the conditions needed for Wilcoxon?
- Test of difference - Related design - Ordinal data
57
What are the conditions needed for Spearman's Rho?
- Test of correlation - Ordinal data
58
What are the conditions needed for unrelated T test?
- Test of difference - Unrelated design - Interval data
59
What are the conditions needed for related T test?
- Tes of difference - Related design - Interval data
60
What are the conditions needed for Pearson's R?
- Test of correlation - Interval data
61
What are the 3 parametric tests?
- Related T test - Unrelated T test - Pearson's R
62
What are the 3 criterea for a parametric test?
- Data must be interval level - Data should be drawn from a population which would be expected to show a normal distribution for the variable being measured. - Homogenity of variance- set of scores should have a similar dispersion.
63
What is nominal data?
Data is represented in the form of categories.
64
What is ordinal data?
Data which is ordered in some way e.g on a rating scale. No equal intervals between each unit
65
What are the limitations of ordinal data?
Lacks precision as based on subjective opinion instead of objective measures. questionnaires/ psychological tests do not measure anything real unlike reaction time or height. So raw scores are converted to ranks which are used in calculations due to unsafe nature of ordinal data.
66
What is interval data?
Based on numerical scales that include units of equal, precisely defined size. Public scales of measurement that produce data based on accepted units of measurement.
67
What is probability?
A measure of the likelihood that a particular event will occur where 0 indicates statistical impossibility and 1 indicates statistical certainty.
68
What is the usual level of significance in psychology?
0.05
69
What does a significance level of P<0.05 mean?
Probability that the results are due to chance is 5% or less
70
When would a more stringent level of significance be used e.g 0.01
Studies where there may be human cost e.g drug trials.
71
What is a type I error?
A false positive - Null hypothesis is rejected when it should be accepted. Claims to have found a significant difference when there is not.
72
When are you more likely to make a type I error?
If significance level is too leniant so to reduce risk of type I error make it more strict.
73
What is a type II error?
A false negative - Null hypothesis is accepted when it should be rejected, claims there is not significant difference when there is.
74
Wher are you more likely to make a type II error?
If the significance level is too stringent, so to reduce risk of type II error make it more lenient.
75
Why do psychologists have a 5% level of significance?
Balances the risk of making type I and type II errors
76
What is a paradigm?
Set of shared assumptions and agreed methods within a scientfific discipline.
77
What does Kuhn say psychology is a pre science?
Lacks a universally accepted paradigm. Has too mnay confliciting approaches.
78
What is a paradigm shift?
When there is a change in the dominant theory within a scientific discipline as there is too much contradictory evidence to ignore.
79
What is a theory?
Set of general laws or principles that have the ability to explain particular events or behaviours. Must be scientifically tested.
80
How are theories constructed?
By gathering evidence from direct observation.
81
What is hypothesis testing?
A key feature of a theory is that it should produce a hypothesis that can be tested, this makes a theory able to be falsified.
82
What is falsifiability and who proposed it?
Popper. A theory cannot be considered scientific unless it can be proven false.
83
What is replicability?
Extent to which scientific procedures and findings can be repeated across different contexts and circumstances and by different researchers.
84
How does replicability play an important role in determining validity of a finding?
Can be generalised.
85
What is objectivity?
Don't allow personal biases or opinions to impact the data or influence behaviour of the participants.
86
What is the empirical method?
Scientific approaches based on the gathering of evidence through direct observation and experience.
87
How do you work out degrees of freedom for unrelated T test?
Na+Nb-2
88
How do you work out degrees of freedom for related T test?
N-1
89
How do you work out degrees of freedom for Pearson's R?
N-2
90
What is the rule of R
The statistical tests with the letter R in the name are those where the calculated value must be equal to or more than the critical value for significance.
91
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