The Basics
Social science research findings can support, confirm, demonstrate, show, or indicate support for ideas but they cannot do this
Prove them
The process of turning a concept into a measured or manipulated variable.
Operationalization
A proportion of the target population to be studied
A sample
An alternative explanation
Confound
A mean
Empirical
Something that does not vary
A constant
A study or survey that includes the entire target population
A census
This type of experiment takes place in the real world in order to get natural behaviors from participants
Field experiment
The most common value
The mode
This ethical principle is concerned with ensuring the burden of research falls on those that stand to benefit from it
Justice
A variable cannot be valid if it is not this
Reliable
Nonprobability sampling
This internal validity threat occurs when experimental condition groups are systematically different from the start
Selection effects
This type of statistics aims to test hypotheses and generalize findings from the sample to the target population
Inferential statistics
This term indicates that social science research findings don't apply to every case every time
Probabilistic
This type of variable scale has an underlying numeric order and equal distances between levels but no true zero
Interval
This type of sampling sorts units by a characteristic, then randomly draws from each created group
Stratified random sampling
This internal validity threat occurs when external factors or events impact participants causing all or most of them to change during a study
History threat
This statistic indicates the probability that the observed relationship is due to chance
p-value
"Drinking bleach has been linked to death" is an example this type of claim
Association
Observational
Every type of probabilistic sampling includes this some type of this manner of selection
Random selection
This is a solution to order effects
Counterbalancing
This test is used to determine if there is a statistical relationship between one categorical variable and one continuous variable.
t-test