Selecting a research method

• Confounding variable


  Factors which influence or interfere with a study as not intended by the researchers (diet, overall health, mental illness, etc)
• Placebo affect


  A belief that the substance given during a study had an effect (i.e. people getting sugar pills thinking they were cured because they think they were given meds)
• Participant or subject bias


  Individuals in a study consciously or unconsciously behaving in a way to ensure the research outcome fits what they believe the researcher wants to see (ex. John Wayne acting how he thoughgt a guard should act in the Stanford prison experiments)
• Single blind procedure


  Avoids participant bias by not letting participants know if they are in the control or experimental group
• Experimenter or researcher bias


  People running the experiment consciously or unconsciously conducting research to ensure the results fit with their expectations (ex. Zimbardo was a prison warden, which made him too close to the actual experiment in the Stanford prison experiment)
• Double blind study


  Avoids experimenter bias by having neither the researcher or the subject knows if the subject is in the control or experimental group
• Hawthorne study


  Famous study of what not to do if you want to avoid bias, conducted in Illinois by Western Electric company
• Hawthorne study premise: bringing in Elton Mayo to study the workplace and how it affects workers at their electric company
• Hawthorne effect


  When being observed, people tend to do the best that they can in that moment, which messes with the validity of studies
• In the Hawthorne study, 5 female workers had their working conditions improved over a week to see if they would be more productive, and they did get more productive, but when returning to the status quo, they stayed the same because they knew they were being watched, which is now known as the Hawthorne effect
• Other issues with the Hawthorne study:

  • No control group
  • Sample size of 5, which was insufficient
  • Research bias: removed subjects who were hurting productivity
  • Participant bias: longer they worked, the better they got