Research methods

• Observational research


  • Pre-determined behaviours
  • Non-participant observers separately from participants
  • Participants - researchers observing as part of
  • Covert - unaware their behaviour is recorded
  • Overt - aware their behaviour is being recorded
  • Naturalistic observation - observation done in natural setting
  • Event sampling - researchers record all behaviour in a given time
  • Some people - repeated
• Naturalistic observation


  • Higher ecological validity
  • Reduced participant variables
• Likert scale


  Rating the agreement with a statement, order increases
• Demand characteristics


  Participants change answers to meet expected answers
• Significant difference


  Alternative hypothesis
• Nominal data


  Cannot be used for correlation
• Semantic differentials 


  Opposing words
• Extraneous variables


  Affect logical validity
• Open questions advantages and disadvantages 


  • deeper understanding
  • In-depth data
  • Subjectivity
  • Harder to compare
• Identify 2 factors affecting reliable

  • Inconsistent participant variable
  • Social desirability
• Quantitative data


  • no inconsistency
  • Standardised questionnaire
• Ecological validity

  Generalising to real-life settings
• Face validity


  Measuring what it's meant to measure
• Internal validity

  Observed effect due to experimental manipulation
• Ethnocentrism


  Generalising to other cultures
• Investigator effects

  Any effect of the investigator's behaviour on the outcome
• Parametric tests

  • Normally distributed data
  • Equal variances
  • Interval/ratio data
• Wilcoxon test


  • Ignore some scores
  • Calculate difference from each score
  • Rank differences
  • Add ranks of least frequent sign
• Spearman's RHO


  • Rank the data
  • Find the difference between ranks
  • Square the differences
  • Sum the squared differences
• Chi-square


  • Add scores
  • Row total x column total
  • Observed - Expected
  • (Observed - Expected)^2
  • (Observed - Expected)^2 / Expected
• Strength of range

  • easy to calculate
  • whether the spread of scores are evenly distributed
• Standard deviation


  • Find mean
  • Find difference
  • Square difference
  • Sum squared differences
  • Divide by number of participants
• Order effects


  How the ordering of tasks affects the outcome
• Participant variables


  Characteristics or aspects of a participant's background
• Systematic sampling


  • Avoids misrepresentation
  • More time and resources
• Opportunity sampling


  • Easy and inexpensive
  • Sample may not be representative
• Self-selecting sampling


  • Achieves large sample size
  • Volunteers display similar characteristics
  • Unrepresentative sample
• Qualitative research


  Allows developed insight into subjective experience, opinions and feelings - cannot put in bar chart and it prevents response bias
• + and - Qualitative data

  + it allows developed insight into the nature of subjective experiences such as opinions and feelings
• Advanatages and disadvantages of naturalistic observation

  High external validity such as ecological validity

  however internal validity may be low due to extraneous variables
• Sign tests Chi is high and so is RHO and everything else’s low


  Independent Nominal Chi

  Repeated Ordinal Wilcoxon

  Repeated Nominal Binomial

  Independent Ordinal Mann Whitney U

  Correlation Ordinal Spearman Rho
• Type 2 error 


  Is a false negative where the researchers think they haven’t found a significant result but they have
• Split-half reliability 


  Halve the participants and have them to take the same test to see if Ps would perform similar
• How to reduce demand characteristics

  Disguising aims
• Psychology as a science 


  Standardised procedures

  controls
• Time sampling 


  Record behaviours in time intervals
• Independent measures (different people in each condition) 


  Result in ps variables

  less order effects
• Repeated measures (same people in a condition)

  Less participants variables

  more order effects
• Naturally occurring IV 


  Quasi experiment
• Field experiment 


  + higher ecological validity

  +reduced demand characteristics

  -ethics

  -difficulty standardised procedures