Chapter 6

• Analytic statement

  A statement that is always true.
• Contradictory statement

  A statement that is always false.
• Deductive model

  • The process of reasoning from general principles to specific instances.
  • Most useful for testing the principles of a theory.
• Discussion

  Concluding section of the research report, used to integrate the experimental findings into the existing body of knowledge, showing how the current research advances knowledge, increase generalizability of known effects, or contradicts past findings.
• Experimental hypothesis

  • A statement that is a tentative explanation of an event or behavior.
  • It predicts the effects of specified antecedent conditions on a measured behavior.
• Falsifiable statement


  A statement that is worded so that it is falsifiable, or disprovable, by experimental results.
• Fruitful statement


  A statement that leads to new studies.
• Hypothesis


  The thesis, or main idea, of an experiment or study consisting of a statement that predicts the relationship between at least two variables.
• Inductive model


  The process of reasoning from specific cases to more general principles to form a hypothesis.
• Introduction

  • Beginning section of a research report that guides the reader toward your research hypothesis.
  • Includes a selective review of relevant, recent research.
• Intuition

  • The development of ideas from hunches.
  • Knowing directly without reasoning from objective data.
• Meta-analysis


  A statistical reviewing procedure that uses data from many similar studies to summarize and quantify research findings about individual topics.
• Nonexperimental hypothesis


  A statement of predictions of how events, traits, or behaviors might be related, but not a statement about cause and effect.
• Parsimonious statement


  A statement that is simple and does not require many supporting assumptions.
• Psychological journal


  A periodical that publishes individual research reports and integrative research reviews, which are up-to-date summaries of what is known about a specific topic.
• Serendipity


  The knack of finding things that are not being sought.
• Synthetic statement


  A statement that can be either true or false, a condition necessary to form an experimental hypothesis.
• Testable statement


  A statement that can be tested because the means exist for manipulating antecedent conditions and for measuring the resulting behavior.