13 research methods

• What is content analysis

  Analyses qualitative data and converts it into quantitative

  Involves tallying
• How can content analysis be carried out


  Identify different categories

  Example of each category

  Go through responses (interviews, transcripts) and tally the number of occurrences in each category
• What is thematic analysis

  Summarises qualitative data (stays qualitative) through themes and using quotations as evidence
• How is thematic analysis done


  Collecting data and transcribing it (writing it out)

  Familiarises themselves with the text

  finds recurring themes

  finds quotations to support themes
• What is inter-rater reliability and when is it used

  Comparing codes (number of tally's) with other psychologists, used for content analysis

  Corelation co- efficient of .8-1
• What is reliability

  Whether somethings is consistent and stays the same
• What are three types of external validity

  ecological

  temporal

  population
• What is external reliability


  measures consistency from one occasion to another ( different days)
• What is internal reliability


  measures how consistent a test or procedure is within itself ( questionnaires, items should measure the same thing)
• What is test-retest reliability

  Presenting same participants with same material on two different occasions and seeing if there's a positive correlation between the two.
• What are the two types of internal validity

  Concurrent

  Face
• What is concurrent validity


  Use a new and old method to measure something, outcome should be the same
• What is face validity


  Whether a material looks subjectively promising and measures what its supposed to
• What are the seven features of science

  Theory construction

  Hypothesis testing

  Empirical methods

  Paradigms

  Replicability

  Objectivity

  Falsification
• what probability level is used

  0.05
• what is a type 1 error

  null hypothesis wrongly rejected. too lenient as its a false positive, optimistic error
• what is a type 2 error

  null hypothesis wrong accepted, false negative too stringent which is a pessimistic error.
• what are the levels of measurement

  nominal

  ordinal

  interval
• what is a nominal measurement

  tallying data
• what is ordinal measurement

  putting things in order. rating scale 1-10
• what is a interval measurement

  most accurate precise measurement. uses seconds, bpm
• how is a sign test carried out

  state hypothesis and if one tailed or two tailed

  record data and work out the sign (by subtracting numbers away from each other and put a + or -)

  find a calculated value. always the smaller value of signs.

  find the critical value by going from num of ppts and level of sig

  see if calculated value is significant