How Psychologists

Do Research
Chapter 2
 How Psychologists Do
Research

• What makes psychological research scientific?

• Research Methods
• Descriptive studies
• Correlational Studies
• Experiments
• Evaluating the findings
• Keeping the enterprise ethical
Making Psychological Research
Scientific

• Precision
• Scepticism
• Reliance on empirical evidence
• Willingness to make risky predictions
• Openness
 Precision

• Theories:
• organized systems of assumptions that purport to explain
phenomena and their interrelationships.
• Hypotheses:
• attempt to predict or account for a set of phenomena; specify
relationships among variables, and are empirically tested.
• Operational definitions:
• define terms in hypotheses by specifying the operations for
observing and measuring the process or phenomenon.
 Scepticism

• Scientists do not accept ideas on faith or

authority.
• Scepticism means treating conclusions,
both old and new, with caution.
 Willingness to Make “Risky
Predictions”
• Confirmation bias
• Tendency to look for or pay attention only
to information that confirms one’s own
belief.
• Principle of Falsifiability
• A scientific theory must make predictions
that are specific enough to expose the
theory to the possibility of
disconfirmation; that is, the theory must
predict not only what will happen, but
also what will not happen.
 Reliance on empirical
evidence

• A scientist relies on
empirical evidence to
determine whether a
hypothesis is true.
 Openness

• Scientists must be willing to tell others

where they got their ideas, how they tested
them and what the results were.
• Peer review, publishing and replicating
research gives science a built-in system of
checks and balances.
 Descriptive Methods

• Methods that yield descriptions of behaviour

but not necessarily causal explanations.
• Include:
• Case studies.
• Observational studies.
• Psychological tests.
• Surveys.
 Case Studies

• A detailed description of a particular

individual being studied or treated which
may be used to formulate broader
research hypotheses.
• More commonly used by clinicians;
occasionally used by researchers.
 Observational Studies

• Researchers carefully and systematically observe

and record behaviour without interfering with
behaviour.
• Naturalistic observation
• Purpose is to observe how people or animals
behave in their natural environment.
• Laboratory observation
• Purpose is to observe people or animals in a
more controlled setting.
 Psychological Tests

• Procedures used to measure and evaluate

personality traits, emotional states, aptitudes,
interests, abilities, and values.
• Psychological tests can be objective or
projective.
• Characteristics of a good test include:
• Standardization.
• Reliability.
• Validity.
 Standardization

• The test is constructed to include uniform procedures

for giving and scoring the test.
• In order to score tests in a standardized way, an
individual’s outcome or score is compared to norms.
• To establish norms, the test is given to a large
group of people who are similar to those for whom
the test is intended.
• By having norms or established standards of
performance, we know who scores low, average or
high.
 Reliability

• When constructing a test, the scores

achieved on the test at one time and
place should be consistent with the
scores achieved at another time and
place.
 Validity
„ The ability of a test to measure what it was
designed to measure.

• Content validity
• The test broadly represents the
trait in question.
• Criterion validity
• The test predicts other measures
of same trait in question.
 Surveys

• Questionnaires and interviews that ask people directly

about their experiences, attitudes, or opinions.
• Should have a representative sample:
• A group of subjects, selected from the population for
study, which matches the population on important
characteristics such as age and sex.
• Popular polls and surveys use volunteers rather than
representative samples.
• Leads to volunteer bias or the belief that volunteers
may differ from those who did not volunteer.
 Correlational Studies

• Defining a correlational study

• Understanding directions of correlations
• Reading Scatterplots
• Evaluating Correlations
 Correlational Study

• A descriptive study that looks for a consistent relationship

between two phenomena.
• Correlation
• A statistical measure of how strongly two variables are
related to one another.
• Correlational coefficients can range from - 1.0 to 1.0.
• Variables
• Characteristics of behaviour or experiences that can be
measured or described by a numeric scale;
• variables are manipulated and assessed in scientific
studies.
 Direction of Correlations

• Positive correlations
• An association between „ Negative
increases in one correlations
„ An association
variable and increases between increases in
in another, or decreases one variable and
in one variable and decreases in another.
decreases in another.
 Scatterplots

• Correlations can be represented by

scatterplots.
 Explaining Correlations

• Start with 3 variables, (X, Y, & Z) where

X and Y are correlated:
• X might cause Y
• Y might cause X
• X might be correlated with Y, which causes
Z
• Correlations show patterns, not causes
 An Experiment

• A controlled test of a hypothesis in which

the researcher manipulates one variable to
discover its effect on another.
• An experiment includes:
• Variables of interest.
• Control conditions.
• Random assignment.
 Variables of Interest

• Independent variables are variables the

experimenter manipulates.
• Dependent variables are variables that the
experimenter predicts will be effected by
manipulations of the independent variable
or variables.
 Control Conditions

• In an experiment, a comparison condition

in which subjects are exposed to the same
treatment as in the experimental condition.
• In some experiments, the control group is
given a placebo which is an inactive
substance or fake treatment.
 Random assignment

• In order for experiments to have

experimental and control groups
composed of subjects similar in
characteristics that may effect their
results, random assignment should be
used.
• Each individual participating in the study
has the same probability as any other of
being assigned to a given group.
 Experimenter Effects

• Unintended changes in subject’s behaviour

due to cues inadvertently given by the
experimenter.
• Strategies for preventing experimenter
effects include single and double-blind
studies.
 Descriptive Statistics

• Statistical procedures that organize

and summarize research data.
• Examples include:
• Arithmetic mean
• Standard deviation
 Inferential Statistics
• Statistical procedures that allow
researchers to draw inferences about how
statistically meaningful a study’s results
are.
• The most commonly used inferential
statistics are significance tests:
• Statistical tests that show how likely a
study’s results occurred merely by
chance.
 Choosing the Best
Explanation
• Interpretation of results may depend on
how the research was conducted.
• Cross-sectional studies involve subjects
of different ages being compared at a
given time.
• Longitudinal studies involve subjects who
are periodically reassessed over a period
of time.
 Judging the Result’s
•
Importance
Statistical techniques such as effect size and
meta-analysis can help us determine how
important our findings are
• Effect size is the amount of variance among
scores in the study accounted for by the
independent variable.
• Meta-analysis is a procedure for combining
and analyzing data from many studies. It
determines how much of the variance in
scores across all studies can be explained by
a particular variable.
 Ethical Dilemmas

• Ethics Considerations in Human

Research
• Ethics Considerations in Animal
Research
 The Ethics of Studying
Humans

• Informed consent
• Prospective participants should receive enough
information to let them decide freely whether to
participate.
• Freedom to withdraw at any time
• Minimize discomfort
• Keep data confidential
• If deception is necessary, debriefing must occur
 The Ethics of Studying
Animals

• Animals have always been used in a small

percentage of psychological studies.
• To conduct basic research.
• To discover practical applications.
• To study issues that cannot be studied.
experimentally with human beings.
• To clarify theoretical questions.
• To improve human welfare.