EXP

• Nonexperimental designs


  Also called nonexperimental research, is a research that lacks the manipulation of the antecedent conditions/independent variable
• Nonexperimental research are used in situations in which an experiment is not practical or desirable
• Nonexperimental research are used whenever testing a hypothesis in an existing real-life situation is necessary or important
• Nonexperimental methods are used to study behavior in natural settings to explore unique or rare occurrences or to sample personal information
• Internal validity


  The degree to which we can confidently infer a causal relationship between variables
• Nonexperimental researches have low internal validity, experimental researches have high internal validity
• External validity


  Refers to the degree to which we can generalize the findings to other circumstances or settings, like the real-world environment
• Experimental researches have low external validity, some nonexperimental researches have high external validity
• When nonexperimental research is preferred

  • The research question or hypothesis relates to a single variable rather than a statistical relationship between two variables (e.g. describing the prevalence of depression among teenagers)
  • The research question pertains to a non-causal statistical relationship between variables (e.g. is there a correlation between intelligence and emotional stability)
  • The research question is about a causal relationship, but the independent variable cannot be manipulated, or participants cannot be randomly assigned to conditions or orders of conditions for practical or ethical reasons (e.g. does damage to a person's frontal lobe affects problem solving ability?)
  • The research question is broad and exploratory, or is about what it is like to have a particular experience (e.g. what is it like to be a working mother diagnosed with depression)
• Qualitative research


  Research that relies on words rather than numbers for the data being collected
• Qualitative research focuses on

  Self-reports, personal narratives, expression of ideas, memories, feelings, and thoughts
• Phenomenology


  A design of inquiry coming from philosophy and psychology in which the researcher describes the lived experiences of individual about a phenomenon as described by participants
• Narrative research


  A design of inquiry from the humanities in which the researcher studies the lives of individuals and ask one or more individuals to provide stories about their lives
• Grounded theory


  A design of inquiry from sociology in which the researcher derives a general, abstract theory of a process, action, or interaction, grounded in the views of participants
• Ethnography


  A design of inquiry coming from anthropology and sociology in which the researchers studies the shared patterns of behaviors, language, and actions of an intact cultural group over a prolonged period of time
• Ethnography


  The study of naturally occurring behavior (often in the wild). Simply observing the behavior of animals or humans permits a global impression of the characteristics and range of behavior. These behaviors can be divided into large units, such as mating, grooming, sleeping, fighting, eating, and so on, or into much smaller units
• Case study


  A type of naturalistic observation and is subject to the advantages and disadvantages of that method. One chief disadvantage is that case studies usually do not allow firm inferences to be made about what causes what
• Deviant-case analysis


  A type of case study that best attempts to minimize the difficulties of making inferences
• Field studies


  Nonexperimental approaches used in a field or real-world settings
• Scientists, being human, also commit errors of observation. Essentially, the research techniques employed by scientists including logic, use of complicated apparatus, controlled conditions, and so on attempt to guard against errors of perception and to ensure that observations reflect the state of nature as accurately as possible
• In making scientific observations, we confront two basic problems that threaten the validity or soundness of the observations: Delimiting - the choice of behaviors to observe, and Reactivity - concerns the participant's reaction to being observed
• Unobtrusive observations


  Unobtrusive observations of subjects are likely to reveal more natural behavior than those in which the subjects are aware of being observed
• Unobtrusive measures


  Unobtrusive measures, in contrast to unobtrusive observations, consist of indirect "observations" of behavior. Unobtrusive measures are indirect because it is the result of behavior, not the behavior itself, that is being studied
• Naturalistic observation is extremely useful in the early stages of research, when one desires simply to gain some idea of the breadth and range of the problem of interest
• The primary problem unique to naturalistic observation is that it is simply descriptive in nature and does not allow us to assess relationships among events
• Naturalistic observation sometimes produces data that are deficient in other ways, too. Scientific data should be easy to reproduce by other people using standardized procedures if these people doubt the observations or are interested in repeating them. Many naturalistic methods, such as the case study, do not allow reproducibility; they are thus open to question by other investigators
• Another problem in naturalistic approaches is that of maintaining as strictly as possible a descriptive rather than an interpretive level of observation. In the study of animals, the problem is often one of anthropomorphizing, or attributing human characteristics to animals
• Systematic observation


  Also referred to as structured observation, a systematic method of collecting behavioral data within a controlled environment
• Participant-observer studies


  A special kind of field observation in which the researcher actually becomes part of the group being studied, also referred to as participant observation
• Relational research


  Attempts to determine how two (usually) or more variables are related to each other
• Variable


  Something that can be measured or manipulated
• Ex post facto data

  Data that are related come from naturally occurring events and do not result from direct manipulation by the researcher
• Archival study


  A descriptive method in which already existing records are reexamined for a new purpose
• Archival records


  Public and private documents describing the activities of individuals, groups, institutions and government
• Contingency research


  One sort of relational research in which data on two variables are compared to see whether the values of one variable depend on the values of the other
• Contingency table


  A tabular presentation of all combinations of categories of two variables, which allows the relationships between the two to be examined
• Positive correlation


  A positive correlation exists when two variables operate in unison so that when one variable rises or falls, the other does the same
• Negative correlation


  Is when two variables move opposite one another so that when one variable rises, the other falls
• Correlational research


  Allows the researcher to determine simultaneously the degree and direction of a relationship with a single statistic
• Correlation coefficient


  Measures the degree and direction of the relationship between two variables. There are several different types of correlation coefficients, but almost all have in common the property that they can vary from - 1.00 through 0.00 to +1.00