RESEARCH METHODS

• What is an extraneous variable?

  Affects everyone
• What is a confounding variable?

  Affects only some conditions/groups (more serious) - results cannot be used. No longer a cause (IV) and effect (DV) relationship
• What are demand characteristics?

  Participants become aware of the 'aim' of the researcher and change their behaviour to meet
• What are investigator effects?

  Behaviour of the investigator/researcher (verbal or non-verbal) guides the behaviour of the participant, decrease in validity
• What is a pilot study? (dealing with EV/CV)


  Trial run before main experiment, identifying variables so that they can be fixed, all data detected after
• What is a control group?

  Participants are not exposed to the manipulation of the IV = comparison
• What is standardisation?

  To keep elements of the study the same for all participants, reduces the EV/CVs
• What is randomisation?

  Use of chance to decide which group you're put into/which task you complete
• What is reliability?

  Consistency (can be repeated in the same way)
• What is inter-rater reliability?

  Literal definition - 'between researchers.' This tests objective, there is always a minimum of 80% between raters otherwise something is wrong
• What is validity?

  Accuracy. Internal lab control for all variables. High internal validity = high control. Low internal validity = low control
• What is external validity?

  Realism, realistically limiting things you can do in an experiment Mundane realism = task. Ecological validity = setting
• What is population referring to?

  People
• What is the cause and effect relationship?

  The variables are fully operationalised, quantify (making a measurable numerical scale) = replicable objective = reliability
• What are experimental designs?

  Methods in which we assign participants to different groups/conditions