Research methods

• Level of deception - Participants need to know as much about the research as possible so they don't feel misled or lied too.
• Confidentiality - The information given by participants needs to remain private unless they give permission otherwise.
• The informed consent is where participants must be told what they will be doing, how long it will take, if there's any risk involved and that they can withdraw at anytime.
• Physical and psychological harm - Researchers must ensure that their methods do not cause any harm to participants physically or psychologically.
• Hypothesis - A prediction based on previous evidence and theory.
• Aim - What the researchers want to find out from the investigation.
• Ethics committee - A group of people who check whether experiments have been conducted ethically.
• Prediction - An educated guess made using existing knowledge.
• Null hypothesis (H0) - This states that there is no difference between two groups or conditions.
• Independent variable - The factor being manipulated by the researcher.
• Variables - Factors which are measured during an experiment.
• Placebo effect - When participants believe they are receiving an active treatment but actually receive no treatment.
• Dependent variable - The response measured by the researcher.
• Control variables - Factors which are kept constant across all experimental conditions.
• Ways to deal with a lack of informed consent


  Presumptive consent, prior general consent, retrospective consent
• Presumptive consent


  Ask a group similar to the participants if they would consent to taking part, if they agree, assume your participant would also be happy
• Prior general consent


  The group of participants are given a range of possible studies and the researcher gains consent to all of them
• Retrospective consent


  Participants are asked for consent during their debrief
• Labaratory experiment strengths


  High control, high internal validity, highly replicable
• Labaratory experiment limitations


  Lacks generalisability, low external validity, low mundane realism
• Field experiment strengths


  Mundane realism, high external validity
• Field experiment limitations


  Loss of control of extraneous variables, replication can be difficult, ethical issues
• Natural experiment strengths


  high external validity,
• Natural experiments limitations


  Participants are not randomly allocated
• Quasi experiment strengths

  High control over extraneous variables, high internal validity, highly replicable
• Quasi experiment limitations

  Cofounding variables
• Naturalitic observation


  Watching and recording behaviour ina setting or context where the target behaviour would usually occur
• Controlled observation


  Watching and recording behaviour in a structured environment where the variables are managed or manipulated vy the researcher
• Covert observation


  Participants are unaware they are being watched
• Overt observation


  Partcipants are aware they are being watched
• Partcipant observation

  Observer becomes part of the group they are watching in order to get a first- hand account
• Non-participant observation


  Observer remains seperate from the partipants and record behaviour in an objective matter