Rationale/Methodlogy
The hypothesis that states there will be no statistically significant difference or relationship between two variables.
What is the null hypothesis?
An ethical principle of research whereby participants are not placed under any pressure or coercion to be involved in the study.
What is voluntary participation?
A visual representation of the mean and standard deviation used in a report for an experimental design.
What is a bar/column graph with error bars?
A type of external validity which considers the degree to which the results can be generalised to the target population given the sample population of the study.
What is population validity?
Related to ethical conduct in research, this refers to intentionally misleading participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that will actually transpire.
What is deception?
A type of experimental design where each participant experiences only one condition of the independent variable.
What is an independent groups design?
A type of study in which researchers manipulate an independent variable and measure a dependent variable to determine a cause-and-effect relationship.
What is an experimental research design?
Processed data used to describe characteristics of conditions/variables. Includes measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion.
What are descriptive statistics?
The cut-off for determining whether the difference between conditions or the relationship between variables is statistically significant or not.
What is the alpha value (0.05)?
A type of external validity which considers the degree to which the experimental environment resembles an environment where the experimental task would be typically undertaken in the real world.
What is ecological validity?
An ethical principle of research whereby participants have the freedom to discontinue participation in a study at any time, including removal of data prior to deidentification.
What is withdrawal rights?
A method for recruiting participants into a study where each person in the target population has an equal chance of being selected for the study (i.e., to be part of the sample population).
What is random sampling?
The inferential statistics which is calculated to determine whether the difference between conditions or the relationship between variables is statistically significant or not.
What is p-value?
Any variables (other than the independent variable) identified after a study has been conducted which seem likely to have influenced the dependent variable.
What is a confounding variable?
The degree to which the effects observed in an experiment (i.e., changes to the dependent variable) are due to the manipulation of the independent variable and not confounds.
What is internal validity?
An attempt to control for participant variables in an independent groups design which ensures that each participant has the same chance of being in one condition as any other.
What is random allocation?
To express a variable in terms of how it will be manipulated or measured.
What is operationalise?
Determined by considering the p-value of an inferential test, this term in used in concluding whether there is likely a true effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable.
What is statistical significance?
A method of controlling for order effects in a repeated measure design by randomly determining the order of each condition for each participant.
What is counterbalancing?
A threat to internal validity, this describes any aspects of a study that may have caused participants to behave as they think the researchers want or expect given the aim.
What is demand characteristics?
Individual differences in the personal characteristics of research participants that, if not controlled, may confound the results of the experiment depending on the aim.
What are participant variables?
A method of controlling for experimenter bias and demand characteristics in an experimental design by ensuring that both the participants and researcher do not know which condition the participants are in.
What is a double-blind procedure?
A parametric statistical test used to test for a significant difference between two conditions of a repeated measures design with interval/ratio data.
What is a dependent (paired) t-test?
Consideration for the quality of a study and its results given the extent to which measures of the dependent variable vary across time (from one use to another) and between different researchers. Examples include test-retest and inter-rater.
What is external reliability?
A consideration for external validity which assesses the extent to which a task undertaken by participants in a study is similar to real-life situations.
What is mundane realism?