Research methods

Cards (1129)

  • Psychologists use a variety of different methods and techniques to conduct research.
  • Many people use the phrase 'They conducted an experiment on...', when they actually mean 'They conducted an investigation on...'.
  • An experiment has specific rules.
  • Whenever you conduct research, you must always carefully consider ethical issues and related matters.
    • Never use anyone under the age of 16 as a participant.
    • Always obtain informed consent from all participants - tell your participants what they will be expected to do and allow them to refuse to take part.
    • Debrief your participants after the study to tell them of any deception and to allow them to withdraw their data if they object, on reflection, to having taken part. Before beginning any study, consult with others on the 'script' you will use for the informed consent and the debrief.
  • Debriefing A post-research interview designed to inform participants of the true nature of the study and to restore them to the state they were in at the start of the study. It may also be used to gain useful feedback about the procedures in the study. Debriefing is not an ethical issue; it is a means of dealing with ethical issues.

    Ethical issues concern questions of right and wrong. They arise in research where there are conflicting sets of values between researchers and participants concerning the goals, procedures or outcomes of a research study.
  • Informed consent Participants must be given comprehensive information concerning the nature and purpose of the research and their role in it, in order that they can make an informed decision about whether to participate.
  • The dependent variable in a study is what is measured, often referred to as the outcome.
  • The independent variable in a study is what is changed or manipulated, often referred to as the treatment.
  • In an experiment, the independent variable is compared with a different condition, often referred to as the control.
  • The hypothesis in a study is a statement of what is expected to be true, often referred to as the prediction.
  • The participants in a study follow a set of standardised procedures, often referred to as the protocol.
  • In a study, it is important to control extraneous variables such as time of day.
  • Hypothesis A precise and testable statement about the assumed relationship between variables. Operationalisation is a key part of making the statement testable. Independent variable (IV) Some event that is directly manipulated by an experimenter in order to test its effect on another variable - the dependent variable (DV).
  • Operationalise Ensuring that variables are in a form that can be easily tested. A concept such as 'educational attainment' needs to be specified more clearly if we are going to investigate it. For example it might be operationalised as 'GCSE grade in Maths. Standardised procedures A set of procedures that are the same for all participants in order to be able to repeat the study. This includes standardised instructions - the instructions given to participants to tell them how to perform the task.
  • Aims A statement of what the researcher(s) intend to find out in a research study.
    Extraneous variables do not vary systematically with the IV and therefore do not act as an alternative IV but may have an effect on the dependent variable. They are nuisance variables that muddy the waters and make it more difficult to detect a significant effect.
  • This study you just did is an experiment. The main characteristic of an experiment is that there is an IV which is deliberately changed (TV on or not) to see if this has any effect on the DV (quality of work). This permits us to draw causal conclusions - we can make a statement about whether having the TV on or off causes a change in quality of the work that is done because we can compare the effect of the two levels of the IV.
  • Experiment A research method where causal conclusions can be drawn because an independent variable has been deliberately manipulated to observe the causal effect on the dependent variable.
  • Invariably, studies in psychology involve a trade-off between control and realism.
  • The greatest control can be achieved in a laboratory.
  • It is debatable to what extent findings from the laboratory can be generalised to other environments, especially the less controlled environments in which everyday life is lived.
  • Some psychologists argue that we can only discover things about behaviour if we uncover cause-and-effect relationships in highly controlled laboratory experiments.
  • Others argue that studies in the natural environment are the only real option for psychologists who are interested in how life is actually lived.
  • Control Refers to the extent to which any variable is held constant or regulated by a researcher.
  • A class of psychology students conducted a study to determine if participants could do their homework effectively while in front of the TV.
  • The independent variable in the study was whether the TV was on or not.
  • The dependent variable in the study was the participants' score on the memory test.
  • If TV is a distraction, the 'TV off' group should do better on the test.
  • Suppose it happened that all the participants in the TV off condition did the memory test in the morning and all the participants in the TV on' condition did the memory test in the afternoon.
  • People are more alert in the morning and this might mean that it was the time of day rather than the lack of noise that caused the change in the independent variable.
  • Time of day may then be regarded as a confounding variable in the study.
  • The experimenter may claim that the independent variable caused a change in the dependent variable but in fact this may not be the case-changes in the dependent variable may actually be caused by a confounding variable.
  • The experimenter may not have actually tested what he intended to test because the influence of a different variable has been tested.
  • The experimenter must be careful to control any possible confounding variable in the study.
  • In this case, participants in both conditions should do the test at the same time of day.
  • Confounding variable A variable under study that is not the IV but which varies systematically with the IV. Changes in the dependent variable may be due to the confounding variable rather than the IV, and therefore the outcome is meaningless. To 'confound' means to cause confusion.
  • Some students will have better memories than others.
  • It is unlikely that all the people with better memories would end up in the 'TV off' group.
  • If they did, this would act as a confounding variable, but it is more likely that this variation is a nuisance variable because we can never be sure that people with good memories are distributed evenly across the two conditions.
  • The extraneous variable of memory ability just makes it more difficult to detect an effect because other factors have an influence.
  • These nuisance variables are called extraneous variables.