Foundations of Scientific Thinking
A testable prediction about the relationship between variables, often framed as an if-then statement.
What is a hypothesis?
An in-depth examination of one individual or group, often used to generate ideas for further research.
What is a case study?
The only research method that can establish cause and effect.
What is an experiment?
The entire group a researcher wants to study and draw conclusions about.
What is the population?
The arithmetic average of a set of scores.
What is the mean?
A relationship in which two variables increase or decrease together.
What is a positive correlation?
An explanation that organizes and integrates many observations and predicts future behaviors or events.
What is a theory?
Watching and recording behavior in a real-world setting without interfering.
What is naturalistic observation?
The factor a researcher manipulates in an experiment.
What is the independent variable?
A sample in which every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected.
What is a random sample?
The middle score when data is ordered from lowest to highest.
What is the median?
A relationship in which one variable increases as the other decreases.
What is a negative correlation?
A precise, measurable description of a variable so it can be tested and replicated by others.
What is an operational definition?
A technique that gathers data on attitudes or behaviors by asking a representative sample of people.
What is a survey?
The group in an experiment that does NOT receive the treatment.
What is the control group?
After a study ends, researchers explain its true purpose — and any deception used — to participants.
What is debriefing?
A measure of how much scores vary, or deviate, from the mean.
What is standard deviation?
The principle that a relationship between two variables does not prove that one causes the other.
What is "correlation does not equal causation"?
Researchers repeat a colleague's memory study with a new group of participants to see if the same results occur.
What is replication?
A statistic ranging from -1.00 to +1.00 that shows the direction and strength of a relationship between two variables.
What is a correlation coefficient (r)?
Assigning participants to groups by chance in order to minimize pre-existing differences between groups.
What is random assignment?
A committee that reviews research proposals to protect the rights and well-being of participants.
What is the IRB (Institutional Review Board)?
A distribution pulled toward unusually high or low scores rather than being symmetrical.
What is a skewed distribution?
A statement of how likely it is that a result occurred purely by chance.
What is statistical significance?
A researcher defines "intelligence" as "one's score on the WAIS-IV test" rather than just "how smart someone is."
What is an operational definition? (applied example)
A psychologist watches wild chimpanzees in their native habitat for six months, recording grooming behavior without interacting with them.
What is naturalistic observation? (applied example)
In a drug trial, neither the nurses giving out pills nor the patients receiving them know who is getting the real medication versus the placebo.
What is a double-blind procedure?
A teacher wants to survey "all students" about study habits but only asks students in AP classes.
What is sample bias?
For the data set 2, 4, 4, 6, 9 — name the mean, median, and mode.
What is mean = 5, median = 4, mode = 4?
A study reports "p < .05" for its findings.
What is a less than 5% probability the result occurred by chance (making it statistically significant)?