Terms

• What is external validity?

  Extent to which you can generalise the findings of a study to other situations, people, settings and measures
• What is internal validity?

   The extent to which you can be confident that a cause-and-effect relationship established in a study cannot be explained by other factors
• What is the reliability of findings?

  The consistency of the findings or results of a psychology research study
• What is a hypothesis?

  A specific, testable statement that proposes a relationship between variables, or predicts an outcome in a research study
• What is introspection?

  First systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations
• What is positive reinforcement?

  Receiving a reward for good behaviour
• What is negative reinforcement?

  You act in a way to avoid something unpleasant
• What is positive punishment?

  You are given something bad
• What is negative punishment?

  Something good is taken away from you
• What is ecological validity?

  Extent to which findings can be generalised beyond the research setting and reflects everyday situations
• What is population?

  Large group of people you are interested in studying
• What is a target population?

  Group of people the psychologists want to be able to generalise their findings
• What is a sample?

  Specific subset of individuals that are used from the larger population
• Population Validity

  Can the research be used to explain the behaviour of the whole population

  Similar to generalisability
• Imposed Etic

  An imposed etic bias occurs when an observer attempts to generalise observations with cultural differences