Research Issues

• What are demand characteristics?


  Clues that participants pick up on that may help them work out the aim which can influence their behaviour
• What does experimental realism refer to?

  making the task sufficiently engaging so participant pays attention to task instead of clues
• What is an extraneous variable?


  anything that has an unwanted effect on the DV (e.g. time of day during experiment)
• What are investigator effects?


  Biases that researchers unconsciously do which influence an experiment
• What is a participant variable?


  Individual differences among participants that may affect the results
• What is the Please-U effect?


  A bias where participants alter their behaviour to try and give the researcher the results they think they want after guessing the aim of the experiment
• What is randomisation in research?

  The use of chance when designing investigations to reduce investigator bias
• What is a situational variable?


  A variable concerning the environment/situation of the experiment that may influence results
• What is the Screw-U effect?


  A bias where participants alter their behaviour to ‘mess up’ results after guessing the aim of the experiment
• What is standardisation?

  every participant gets the same environment/materials/instructions/procedures
• Why is standardisation important?


  1. makes replication easier
  2. more confident that a change in DV is caused by IV
  3. replication judges how reliable experiment is (consistent)
• Can extraneous variables be controlled?


  Yes
• What is a confounding variable?

  a type of extraneous variable that systematically varies with the IV
• Can confounding variables be controlled?


  No
• What is an example of a confounding variable?

  Age/Gender
• What is an experimenter variable?


  the appearance or behaviour of the experimenter which may influence results
• What are the types of extraneous variables?

  Participant variable, situational variable, and experimenter variable
• How can we control research issues?

  Randomisation and standardisation