Terminology
The group of individuals in a study that represent the target population.
What is a sample?
Research method that studies groups of individuals and therefore concentrates on average performance, rather than on the performance of a single individual, in an attempt to describe universal behavioural laws.
What is the nomothetic method?
A measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other.
What is a correlation?
Research that generates detailed descriptions of a certain case, or phenomenon, providing thick descriptions.
What is the idiographic approach?
The extent to which variables measure what they are supposed to measure. Do your operationalizations actually measure the construct?
What is construct validity?
Everything that can be registered by an independent observer, eg. gestures, hormone levels, physical actions, or attitudes, in the form of answers to surveys/interviews.
What is a behaviour?
A factor other than the independent variable that might effect the dependent variable, thus making it difficult to claim a causal relationship.
What is a confounding variable?
A graph with points plotted to show a possible relationship between two sets of data.
What is a scatter plot?
Credibility in qualitative research; the extent to which the idiographic findings reflect reality.
What is trustworthiness?
The extent to which a study is realistic or representative of real life; a subset of external validity.
What is ecological validity?
Studies in which the investigator analyzes the relationships among variables that were in place before the study, without manipulating those variables.
What are correlational studies?
Refers to how participants are allocated to the different conditions (or IV groups) in an experiment., and is part of the methods section in a research paper.
What is an experimental design?
A relationship between variables in which one variable increases as the other variable increases (.10 to 1)
What is a positive correlation?
Combining different approaches to collecting and interpreting data in order to provide more trustworthy findings.
What is triangulation?
The extent to which results observed in a study will generalize to the target population; a subset of external validity.
What is population validity?
The thoughts, feelings, and motives that each of us experiences privately but that cannot be observed directly.
What are mental processes?
When the researcher tests separate groups of people, each group in a different condition.
What is independent measures?
A statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by chance, and cannot be generalized to the target population (p-value)
What is statistical significance?
A positive relationship often characterized by mutual trust or sympathy. Having this reduces behavioral changes in participants, which may alter the trustworthiness of qualitative research.
What is rapport?
When unintended differences between the participants in different groups occur in an experiment, which threaten internal validity.
What is selection bias?
A way of expressing a construct in the terms of an observable behaviour, allowing the researcher to study it, eg. studying heart rate to indicate romantic feelings.
What is an operationalization?
When the same participants are used in all the conditions in the experiment, and comparisons are made between conditions instead of between groups.
What is repeated measures?
Cannot be inferred in a correlational study.
What is causation?
A researcher bias that comes from the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.
What is confirmation bias?
Cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behavior is expected, altering participants' behaviour either in a positive or negative way.
What are demand characteristics?