Research Basics
A prediction about the outcome of a study.
What is a hypothesis?
The group in an experiment that does NOT receive the treatment being tested.
What is the control group?
An in-depth investigation focused on a single individual or small group.
What is a case study?
A subset of people selected from a larger group to participate in a study.
What is a sample?
Participants must agree to take part after being told what the study involves.
What is informed consent?
This process involves other researchers attempting to run the same study to verify its results.
What is replication?
This ensures every participant has an equal chance of being placed in any group.
What is random assignment?
The only research method that can establish cause and effect between variables.
What is a true experiment?
This occurs when a sample does not accurately reflect the population it was drawn from.
What is sampling bias?
After a study involving deception, researchers are required to do this.
What is debriefing?
This type of research collects non-numerical data like interviews or observations.
What is qualitative research?
The variable a researcher measures to observe the outcome of an experiment.
What is the dependent variable?
A research method where behavior is watched and recorded in its natural setting without interference.
What is naturalistic observation?
This sampling method gives every member of a population an equal chance of being selected.
What is random sampling?
This cognitive bias causes people to believe they "knew it all along" after learning an outcome.
What is hindsight bias?
The specific, measurable way a researcher defines a variable for their study.
What is an operational definition?
A treatment that is sometimes given to the control group with no real effect.
What is a placebo?
A research design that examines relationships between variables but cannot prove one caused the other.
What is correlational research?
The degree to which findings from a study's sample can be applied to the broader population.
What is generalizability?
This bias occurs when participants answer questions the way they think they should rather than honestly.
What is social desirability bias?
A study that compiles and statistically analyzes data pooled from many independent studies on the same topic.
What is a meta-analysis?
In this procedure, neither participants nor researchers know who received the real treatment.
What is a double blind procedure?
This research method involves paid or volunteer actors who play a role in a study without other participants knowing.
What are confederates?
A sample that mirrors the characteristics of the population in proportion, making its results more trustworthy.
What is a representative sample?
This institutional body must approve research proposals involving human participants before a study can begin.
What is the Institutional Review Board (IRB)?