keywords

• aims are a statement of what the researcher(s) intend to find out in a research study
• debriefing is a post-research interview designed to inform participants of the true nature of the study and to restore them to the state they were in at the start of the study, it may also be used to gain useful feedback about the procedures in the study, debriefing is not an ethical issue it is a means of dealing w/ ethical issues
• ethical issues are concern questions of right and wrong, they arise in research where there are conflicting sets of values between researchers and participants concerning the goals, procedures or outcomes of a research study
• experiment is a research method where casual conclusions can be drawn because an IV has been deliberately manipulated to observe the causal effect on the DV
• extraneous variables do not vary systematically w/ the IV and therefore do not act as an alternative IV but may have an effect on the DV, they are nuisance variables that muddy the waters and make it more difficult to detect a significant effect
• hypothesis is a precise and testable statement about what the assumed relationship between variables, operationalisation is a key part of making the statement testable
• independent variable is some event that is directly manipulated by an experimenter in order to test its effect on another variable - the DV, or what you CHANGE
• informed consent is participants must be given comprehensive information concerning the nature and purpose of the research and their role in it, in order that they can make an informed decision about whether to participate
• operationalise is ensuring that variables are in a form that can be easily tested, a concept such as 'educational attainment' needs to be specified more clearly if we are going to investigate it, e.g. it might be operationalised as 'GCSE grade in Maths'
• standardised procedures are a set of procedures that are the same for all participants in order to be able to repeat the study, this includes standardised instructions - the instructions given to participants to tell them how to perform the task
• confounding variables is a variable under study that is not the IV but which varies systematically w/ the IV, changed in the DV may be due to the confounding variable rather than the IV and therefore the outcome is meaningless to 'confound' means to cause confusion
• a confounding variable is  a variable which is related to one or more of the variables defined in a study
• control refers to the extent to which any variable is held constant or regulated by a researcher
• external validity is the degree to which a research finding can be generalised to other settings (ecological validity) to other groups of people (population validity) over time (historical validity)
• external validity is the findings of a study can be more easily generalized to the outside world
• extraneous variables do not vary systematically w/ the IV and therefore do not act as an alternative IV but may have an effect on the dependent variable, they are nuisance variables that muddy the waters and make it more difficult to detect a significant effect
• internal validity is the degree to which an observed effect was due to the experimental manipulation rather than other factors such as confounding/extraneous variables
• mundane realism refers to how a study mirrors the real world, the research environment is realistic to the degree to which experiences encountered to the research environment will occur in the real world
• validity refers to whether an observed effect is a genuine one
• confederate is a person in a study who is not a real participants and has been instructed how to behave by the investigator
• directional hypothesis states the direction of the predicted difference between 2 conditions or 2 groups of participants
• non-directional hypothesis predicts simply that there is a difference between the 2 conditions or 2 groups of participants w/o stating the direction of the difference
• pilot study is a small scale trial run of a study to test any aspects of the design w/ a view to making improvements
• counterbalancing is an experimental technique used to overcome order effects when using a repeated measures design, counterbalancing ensures that each condition is tested first or seconds in equal amounts
• experimental design is a set of procedures used to control the influence of factors such as participant variables in an experiment
• independent groups design is when participants are allocated to 2 (or more) groups representing different levels of the IV, allocation is usually done using random techniques
• matched pairs design is when pairs of participants are matched in terms of key variables such as age and IQ, one member of each pair is allocated to one of the conditions under test and the second person is allocated to the other condition
• order effect in a repeated measures design, an extraneous variable arising from the order in which conditions are presented e.g. a practice effect or fatigue effect
• random allocation is allocating participants to experimental groups or conditions using random techniques
• repeated measures design is when each participants takes part in every condition under test i.e. each level of the IV
• field experiment is a controlled experiment conducted outside a laboratory, the IV is still manipulated by the experimenter and therefore casual relationships can be demonstrated, field experiments tend to have lower internal validity (more difficult to control extraneous variables) and higher external validity (greater mundane realism) participants are usually unaware that they are participating in an experiment thus their behaviour may be more natural and they are less likely to respond to cues from the experimenter
• a field experiment is a research method that uses some controlled elements of traditional lab experiments, but takes place in natural, real-world settings
• laboratory experiment is an experiment carried out in a controlled setting, lab experiments tend to have high internal validity because good control over all variables is possible, they tend to have low ecological validity because participants are aware they are being studied and also the tasks involved tend to be more artificial
• natural experiment is a research method in which the experimenter has not manipulated the IV directly, the IV would vary whether or not the researcher was interested, the researcher records the effect of the IV on a DV, this DV may be measured in a lab, strictly speaking an experiment involves the deliberate manipulation of an IV and random allocation to conditions by the experimenter -neither of which apply to a natural experiment and therefore causal conclusions can only tentatively be drawn
• natural experiment is a research procedure that occurs in the participant's natural setting that requires no manipulation by the researcher
• quasi-experiments are studies that are 'almost' experiments, the IV is actually not something that varies at all - it is a condition that exists the researcher records the effect of this 'quasi-IV' on a DV as w/ a natural experiment the lack of manipulation of the IV and the lack of random allocation means that causal conclusions can only tentatively be drawn
• a quasi experiment are studies that aim to evaluate interventions but that do not use randomization
• demand characteristics are a cue that makes participants unconsciously aware of the aims of a study or helps participants work out what the researcher expects to find
• investigator effects occur when a researcher unintentionally, or unconsciously influences the outcome of any research they are conducting
• investigator effects (sometimes referred to as investigator or experimenter bias) anything that an investigator does that has an effect on a participants performance in a study other than what was intended, this includes direct effects (as a consequence of the investigator interacting w/ the participant) and indirect effects (as a consequence of the investigator designing the study), investigator effects may act as a confounding or extraneous variable