Research methods

• State what is meant by primary data.

  data collected directly by the researcher
• what is Internal reliability?

  consistency of results within the study
• Explain how structured and unstructured interviews are different.

  structured interviews- pre-set questions

  unstructured- questions asked depend on the participant’s response
• Outline how you could use a rating scale in your questionnaire.

  A rating scale has a fixed set of responses like: ‘How stressed do you feel? Not at all 0 1 2 3 4 5 very
• experimenter bias.

  to favour one psychological theory over another so that results are not objective
• Explain one strength of a laboratory experiment

  there are fewer extraneous variables making findings more reliable
• Outline what is meant by the term ‘extraneous variable’.

  an extraneous variable is something that changes alongside the IV that can also affect the DV
• What is a null hypothesis?

  no difference
• What is an alternative hypothesis?

  A prediction of a difference or relationship
• What is an independent variable?

  What the researcher changes
• What is a dependent variable?

  variable that is measured
• What are repeated measures?

  All participants take part in all conditions of the IV
• What are independent measures?

  Different participants in each conditions of the IV
• What is the natural experiment?

  Participants cant be randomly allocated to groups
• What is quantitative data?

  numerical data
• What is qualitative data?


  non-numerical data
• What is reliability?

  The results will be similar every time
• What is validity?

  accuracy
• What is research methods?

  different ways to study the human brain, thoughts and behaviour
• describe an experiment


  -Situation is set up by the researcher

  -two or more groups to compare

  -records observable behaviour- what people do or can do

  -can be a lab experiment (in a controlled environment) or field or experiment (in a normal environment)
• describe an observation

  -researcher records behaviour

  -can be controlled( set-up by the researcher) or naturalistic

  -watching behaviour without changing anything
• describe a questionnaire

  -researcher designs a series of questions that participants answer on paper or online

  -measure thoughts or feelings
• describe an interview

  -Researcher asks questions face to face

  Can be unstructured (like a conversation) or structured (questions prepared in advance)

  -Measures thoughts or feelings
• problems with an experiment

  if not repeated the results are not fully reliable.
• Problems with questionnaires

  people may lie and they might want to please the interviewer.
• problems with case study

  cant generalise
• Problems with observation

  people act different when watched or unwatched
• problems with interview

  the right question may not be asked
• What is ecological validity?

  How valid it is in real life
• What is low ecological validity?

  Not realistic
• What is a co-variable?

  Two variables that change with eachother
• What is an extraneous variable? 


  Something extra that might not affect the results
• What is a confounding variable?

  a factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment
• Points to make in hypothesis

  1)prediction

  2)DV

  3)first condition of the IV

  4) second condition of the IV
• target population

  The entire group you want to find out about
• sample

  A smaller subset of the target population
• random sampling

  Everything has an equal chance of being selected
• opportunity sampling

  People are selected because they are easily available
• self selected sampling

  People volunteer
• researcher bias

  The researcher making selections