FUNDAMENTALS OF RESEARCH

 How is a research/study described?

o Aim
 Purpose of the study
 Which … is studied in a population?
 Behavior
 Cognitive process
o Procedure
 Step-by-step process used by the researcher to carry out the study
 How the data was collected?
 It can be replicated by other researchers
o Results
 Numerical / Descriptive data obtained and processed
o Findings
 How researchers interpreted the collected data
 Open to discussion / debate
 More credible if confirmed by other studies
 Relevant for the studied population
 Aware of potential cultural bias
 Who should be in the study?
o Participants
 People who take part in psychological study
o Target population
 Group of people whom psychologists are interested in for their study
o Sample
 Definition
 Nature of the group of participants who are chosen from the target
population to take part in the study
 Goal
 Obtain a sample that is representative of the target population
o It is not possible to test the whole population
 Representative
 Size
o Small (Bad)
 Open to distortions
 Each individual has quite a lot of influence on the
overall result
o Large (Good)
 No population validity
 A sample that is not representative of the target population
 Sampling techniques
o Convenience (opportunity) sampling
 Description
 Find a group that already exists such as:
o IB psychology class
 o Local church community
 Participants are selected based on naturally occurring groups
 Requirements
 Question nature of an opportunity sample
o What type of people are there?
o Is there a gender, cultural or socioeconomic imbalance in
who is living in this home?
 Exploratory study
o Wide generalization of findings is not the primary goal of
research
o Look if the hypothesis works
 Advantage
 Easy to get participants
 Low financial cost and time
 Disadvantage
 Lead to biased results
 Problematic to generalize
 Lack of representativeness
o Haphazard sampling
 Description
 No random / systematic
 Standing in front of the local mall and choosing people to
interview on their thoughts about exercise and health
 Disadvantage
 Biased form of sampling
 Completely AVOIDED
o Self-selected sample
 Description
 Participants volunteer in response to an advertisement
 Advantage
 Easy to obtain participants
 Sample will be highly motivated
 Disadvantage
 Difficult to generalize (More motivated than general population)
o It is not clear whether these results can apply to people
outside of the group that took part in the study
o Snowball sampling
 Description
 When participants recruit other participants from among their
friends and acquaintances
 Condition
 Often used when it may be difficult to access research participants
o Participants don’t voluntarily respond to an ad in the paper
 Drug / Alcohol users
o Researchers looking for a very specific type of person
  Foreigners
 Advantages
 Save time
 Establish trust with the researcher
 Disadvantage
 Not highly representative of the larger population
o Random sampling (Desirable / ideal method)
 Description
 One in which every member of the target population has an equal
chance of being selected
o Pulling names out of a hat
o Random number generator
 Advantages
 Easy to generalize findings to the larger population
o If the sample is large enough, it represents the population
 Aim
 Getting rid of bias
 Struggles
 A particular group is overrepresented in the chosen random sample
o Narrow down your target population
o Stratified sampling (Theory driven)
 Description
 Drawing random samples from each subpopulation within the
target population
o Distribution of characteristics in a target sample.
 20 % of entire school (30 students) is Indian
 6 Indians must be randomly selected
 Advantage
 Takes into consideration the diversity of a target sample
 Sampling bias in Psychology research
o Non-random sampling technique => Sampling bias
 Some members of population are less likely to be included than others.
 Participant variables in the sample are not representative
o Outliers
 Least representative population one could find for generalizing a global
population
o Examples
 Sears’ study (1986)
 2/3 of psychological studies used students as participants
 Cannot be generalized to larger population
 Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010)
 67% of American psychological research uses undergraduate
university students as participants
 96% of psychology samples come from countries that make up
only 12% percent of world’s population
 o WEIRD = Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democrat
 Hanel and Vione (2016)
 Significant differences between students from different countries
o Reasons for using students
 A huge amount of psychology research takes place at universities
 Saves working time, money, and a lot of effort
 Procedures
o Setting (Location)
 Laboratory
 Advantage
o Controlled situation
o No influence on variables by outside factors
 Field study (Naturalistic setting)
 Advantage
o Observing behavior in “real life”
o Nature
 Retrospective
 Description
o Asking the participant about past behavior (data)
 Limitations
o Reliance on participants’ memory
o Not possible to verity the shared information by participant
 Prospective
 Description
o Measures a variable at the beginning of a study and
watches the effect of this variable over time
 Longitudinal
 Description
o Involves repeated observations of the same variables over
long periods of time
 Advantage
o Analysis of the same individuals over time
 Disadvantage
o Low efficiency
 Cross-sectional
 Description
o Analyzes data collected from a population at a specific
point in time
 Measuring 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 years old all
in one study
 Advantage
o High efficiency
 Less time to carry out
 Low risk of participants dropping out
 Disadvantage
 o Analysis of different people
 Individual differences
 Findings: validity and reliability
o Essential skills
 Interpretating findings
 Assessing any practical applications
o Application
 Description
 How a theory or empirical study is used
o Therapy
o Education
o Crime
o Sport
o Validity
 Description
 Whether a research does what it claims to do
 Types
 Construct
o Description
 Defines the quality of operationalizations
o Steps
 Agreed-upon definition of the phenomenon
 Expressed phenomenon in terms of observable
behavior
 Can be measured
 Empirical research
 Internal (Methodological quality of an experiment)
o How well an experiment is done
 Well controlled
 Avoids the influence of extraneous
variables on the outcome of the study
 Defined variables (IV / DV)
o Threats (Bias)
 Selection
 Description
o Groups are not equivalent at the
start of the experiment
o Differences in variables
 Designs
o Independent measure
o Matched pairs
 History
 Description
 o Outside events that happen to
participants in the course of the
experiment.
 Influence DV
 Not evenly distributed
 Designs
o Lengthy experiments
 Solution
o Elimination of extraneous
variables
o Constancy of variables
 Maturation
 Description
o Natural developmental processes
such as fatigue or simply growth
 Solution
o Using a control group
 Testing effect
 Description
o The first measurement of the DV
may affect the second
measurement
 Design
o Repeated measures
 Solution
o Use a control group
 Instrumentation
 Description
o The instrument measuring the DV
changes slightly between
measurements
 Solution
o Standardize measurement
conditions as much as possible
across all comparison groups.
 Regression to the mean
 Description
o Initial score on the DV is extreme
low or high
 Solution
o Control group with the same
starting average
 Experimental mortality
 Description
 o Some participants drop out during
an experiment not randomly
among groups
 Demand characteristics
 Description
o Situation in which participants
understand the purpose of the
experiment and change their
behavior subconsciously to fit that
interpretation
 Solution
o Deception
 Raises ethical issues
 Design
o Repeated measures
 Experimenter bias
 Description
o Situations in which the researcher
exerts an influence on the results
of the study
 Solution
o Double-blind designs
 Information that could
introduce bias is withheld
both from the participants
and from the people
conducting the experiment
 External
o Description
 Extent to which the results can be generalized to
other situations and other people
o Population
 Description
 How well the sample used can be
generalized to a population as a whole
o Represents target population
o Sampling technique
o Ecological
 Description
 How much the experimental environment
influences behavior
 Factors
 Mundane realism
o Level to which the situation
represents a real-life situation
  Generalizability of the study to other
settings outside the laboratory
o Controlled => Low
o Reliability
 Description
 Results can be replicated
 Conditions
 Standardized procedure
o Give same results
 Laboratory experiment
o Description
 Goal
 Determine whether a cause-and-effect relationship exists between
two variables
 Quantitative research
 Generates numerical data
 Statistically tested for significance
o Rule out the role of chance in the results
 Advantage
 Avoid extraneous variables
o Variables that may influence the behavior of a participant
 Disadvantage
 Low ecological validity
o Not reflects what happens in real life
o Variables
 Types
 Independent
o Cause a change in the other variable (Manipulation)
 Music
 Dependent
o Measured after the manipulation of the independent
variable
 Ability to recall a list of words
 Control
o Procedure must be exactly the same
 List of words (Number / Font / Size)
 Temperature of the rooms
 Time of day
 Operationalization
 Written in such a way that it is clear what is being measured
o Music
 Dissonant rock played at a volume of 100 decibels
o Ability to recall a list of words
 Number of words remembered from a list of 30
o Standardization
  Description
 Procedures that are written in enough detail that they can be easily
replicated by another researcher.
o Random allocation
 Participants have the same chance of being assigned to the experimental or
the control condition
 Lessens the potential for characteristics of the individuals
influencing the results
o Research question
 Description
 Aim of the study, limited to a certain population
o Hypothesis
 Background
 Read through the research which is available on the research
question that interests them
 Description
 Prediction of how the IV affects the DV
 What is expected from the manipulation of the IV
 Control condition
 Looking for a difference between the manipulation of IV
o Null hypothesis
 Description
 States that the IV will have no effect on the DV, or that any change
in the DV will be due to chance
 Purpose
 To be rejected
 Show that predicted cause-and-effect relationship between the IV
and the DV actually exists
o Testing experiments
 Accept the null hypothesis
 No relationship between variables
 Reject the null hypothesis
 There is some type of relationship between the variables
 Field experiment
o Description
 Studies outside of the laboratory, in the “real world”
o Disadvantages
 Limitations
 Cannot control for extraneous variables
 Cannot be easily replicated
 Ethical considerations
 Not getting informed consent
 Debriefing
 Quasi experiment
o Description
  Participants are not randomly allocated to conditions
 Participants are group based on a trait or behavior
 Variable cannot be randomly assigned
o Gender
o Disease
o Culture
o Age
o Limitation
 Do not show direct causation, but imply a causal relationship between an
IV and a DV
 Preexisting differences in one variable may be accompanied by
differences in unexpected confounding variables
 Natural (Quasi-experiment subset)
o Description
 Independent variable that is environmental in nature and outside of the
control of the researcher
 Behavior is measured both before and after the variable was introduced
 Demand characteristics (Participant expectations)
o Description
 Participants act differently because they know that they are in a study
 Guess the aims of the study and act accordingly
o Types
 Expectancy effect
 Participant attempts to discern the experimenter’s hypotheses with
the goal of “helping” the researcher
 Screw you effect
 Participant attempts to discern the experimenter’s hypotheses, but
only to destroy the credibility of the study
 Social desirability effect
 Participants answers in a way that makes him/her look good to
researcher
 Researcher bias
o Description
 When the experimenter sees what he or she is looking for.
 Expectations of the researcher consciously affect the findings of
the study
o Solution
 Double-blind control
 Neither the participants nor the experimenters know the aim of the
study and which group is the treatment and which one the control
group
 Participant variability
o Description
 Limitation of a study when characteristics of the sample affect the
dependent variable
o Solution
  Selecting a random sample
 Randomly allocating the participants to the treatment and control
groups
 Artificiality
o Description
 Situation created is so unlikely to occur that one has to wonder if there is
any validity in the findings.
 Correlational studies
o Description
 Experiment cannot be carried out
 No IV is manipulated
 No cause-and-effect relationship can be determined
 Collected data show a relationship between two variables
 When one variable changes, another variable changes as well
o Types
 Positive
 Both variables are affected in the same way
o As x increase, y increases
 Negative
 As one variable increases, the other decreases
 Bidirectional ambiguity
o Situation in which is impossible to know if x causes y, y causes x, or whether it is
just coincidental, and the results are actually due to a third variable
 Experimental designs
o Organization of groups and conditions in an experiment
 Repeated measures design
o Description
 One sample of participants receives each condition of an experiment
 Comparison of conditions
o Cases
 Two or more conditions tested distinctively
 The same participants would memorize a list of words with music,
and then again without music
 Two or more conditions tested concurrently
 A group of participants would memorize a list of words, which
some are about adulthood and others are about childhood.
o Strength
 Control of participant variability
 An individual is compared to himself
 Fewer participants are needed
o Limitations
 Order effects (Participants are asked to involve in more than one condition)
 Examples
o Boredom
o Fatigue
 o Practice effect
 People get better at something just because they
keep doing it.
 Solution
o Counter balancing (Order of the conditions is reversed)
 One group of participants will start with condition
A and then takes part in condition B.
 The second group of participants starts with
condition B and then takes part in condition A
o The order of the conditions does not affect the results of
the study.
 Demand characteristics
 Participants form an interpretation of the experiment’s purpose and
subconsciously change their behavior to fit that interpretation.
o Expectancy effect
 Doing what the researcher wants them to do
o Screw you effect
 Trying to disprove the hypothesis
o Suggestions
 Not possible to use the same materials for both conditions
 Use the same list of words to memorize under two conditions
 Introduction of a confounding variable (Extraneous variables)
 Lower the internal validity of an experiment, making it less clear
whether the IV influenced the DV
 Independent samples design
o Description
 Members of the sample are randomly allocated to one condition of the
experiment
 Random allocation of participants into groups
o Large sample
 Comparison between experimental and control group
o Organization
 2x2 (2 IV | 3 levels)
 2x3 (2 IV | 3 levels)
o Strength
 Order effects are controlled
 Each participant only experiences one condition
 Demand characteristics
 Participants are less likely to guess the hypothesis
 Same materials could be used for all conditions
o Limitations
 Influence of participant variability
 More participants are required
 Matched pairs design
o Description
  Independent samples design in which participants are not randomly
allocated to conditions
 Matching variable
o Pretested to variable
o Matched based on a trait
o Reasons
 Sample size is not large
 Importance in equivalence of a specific variable
o Strength
 Lessen the change that participant variability will affect the results
 Each condition has the full range of ability

 Ethics
o Description
 Correct rules of conduct necessary when carrying out research
o Relation to psychology
 Moral responsibility to protect research participants from physical and
psychological harm
 Early research in psychology didn’t follow clear ethical guidelines
 Why?
 When participant feel that they have been taken advantage of,
deceieved or harmed, this hurts the field of psychology, making it
less likely for people to volunteer.
 How?
 Respects the dignity of the participants
 Following agreed ethical guidelines
o Ethical guidelines
 Protection from undue stress or harm
 No harm to participants
 No humiliation to a participation
 No forcing people to reveal private information
 Nothing done to participant that will have a permanent effect on
their physical or psychological health
 Informed consent from participants before the research begins
 Nature of the study
o What the research is about and any potential issues that
may arise?
 Rights of the participants
o Withdraw from the study at any time
 Agreement of the participant
 oGuardians of the participant
 Physical / Mental illness
 Children
 Deception
o Misinformation or not telling the participant the complete
goal of the study
 Slight deception might be used by justifying why it
is necessary and an ethics boards should approve it
 Debriefing
 Description
o The true aims and purpose of the research is revealed to the
participants
o Any deception is justified
o Participants must leave the study in the same physical and
psychological state in which they arrived
 Obtained information is anonymized
o Identities will not be revealed in the publication of the
study or any other use of the data thereafter.
 Experiment
o Function
 Make cause-and-effect inferences
 Manipulating IV
 Observing how the DV responds
 Discover universal laws of behavior applicable to large groups of people
across a variety of situations
 Confounding variables
o Variables that can potentially distort the relationship between the IV and the DV
 Contribute to bias
 Need to be controlled
 Eliminating
 Keeping them constant in all groups of participants
 Generalizing results
o Essential characteristics of the target population
 Cultural background
 Socioeconomic status
 Type of school
o Solution
 Keep sampling
 Narrow down the target population
 Target population
o Group of people to which the findings of the study are expected to be generalized
 Sample
o Group of people taking part in the experiment
o Representative of the target population (Essential characteristics)
 Representativeness
 o How to establish it?
 Basis of prior knowledge from published theories and research studies
 Choice of target population

 Quantitative analysis
o Correlation
 Measure of linear relationship between two variables
o Effect size
 Absolute value of the correlation coefficient (1 | -1) Cohen
 Less than 0.10 | Negligible
 0.10 – 0.29 | Small
 0.30 – 0.49 | Medium
 0,50 or larger | Large
o Statistical significance
 Shows the likelihood that a correlation of this size has been obtained by a
chance
 With larger samples, correlation estimates are more reliable and
confident that the correlation is not a product of random chance but
a genuine reflection of a relationship between the two variables in
the population
 Conventional cut-off points
 Less than 5%
o Statistically significant
o Reliably different from 0
o Replicated at least 95 out of 100 independent samples
 Aim
 Statistically significant correlations with large effect sizes
o Limitation
 Correlations cannot be interpreted in terms of causation
 Third variable problem between X and Y
 Curvilinear relationships
 Spurious correlations
 Some of the statistically significant correlations would be the result
of chance
o Sampling strategies
 Identification of target population
 Sample is drawn from the population using random, stratified, opportunity,
or self-selected sampling
 Representativity depends on sampling method
o Credibility and bias
 Levels
 Variable measurement
o Bias in observation
 Interpretation of findings
 The Bobo Beatdown

 Procedure
o While the woman was throttling that big inflatable clown, there was a child
watching her.
o After about ten minutes of observing this clown-beating display, the kid was taken
to a room full of toys, which were soon taken away.
o Then, the frustrated kid was left alone with Bobo.
 Kids who watched the woman beating the clown were much more likely to
mimic her aggression – kicking, punching, throwing, and attempting to
maul Bobo with a hammer
 Children who saw an adult playing nicely with the doll, or just ignoring it,
didn’t respond the same way in their frustration
 Theory
o Learning
 Process of acquiring, through experience, new and relatively enduring
information, or behaviors
o Cognition
 Our thoughts, perspectives, and expectations
o Associative learning (Animal = Humans) | Behaviorist view
 Learning is solely conditioning and association, rewards, and punishments
 Classical conditioning
o A type of learning in which one learns to link tow or more
stimuli and anticipate events
 Operant conditioning
 o Behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or
diminished if followed by a punisher.
 When a subject links certain events, behaviors, or stimuli together in the
process of conditioning
 Species can more easily learn associations that help them thrive or
survive, and that not all associations are learned equally.
 What we learn doesn’t only influence our behavior, it also shapes
our attitudes
o Social cognitive learning
 Learning can occur through observing and imitating someone else’s
behavior
 Our context can reinforce something more than a reward or
punishment
 Cognitive maps
 Observational learning
 Learning by watching other people, or being influenced by them in
other ways
 Social observation shapes behavior, especially in children
 Modelling
 Process of observing and imitating a specific behavior
o Most used for humans to learn
 Neuroimaging
 When an individual watches someone else, he receives an award
 Mirror neurons
o Fire when performing certain actions or when observing
another doing so
Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery – it’s the sincerest form of learning
We are, in truth, more than half what we are by imitation
 Introducing Psychological Research

 Authors
o Bandura A.
o Ross D.
o Ross S.
 Aim
o Look at how aggressive behavior develops in children
 Is aggression an innate feature of our behavior?
 Is male aggression towards women a natural behavior or learned?
 How is aggression learned?
 Background
o Behaviorism
 People are shaped by their life experiences
o Social Cognitive Learning Theory
 Explain complex human social behavior
 Imitation
 Reinforcement
 Hypothesis
o If children are passive witnesses to an aggressive display by an adult, they will
imitate this aggressive behavior when given the opportunity
 Participants exposed to aggressive models will reproduce aggressive acts
resembling those of the models
  Observation of a subdued non-aggressive models will have a generalized
inhibiting effect on the participant’s subsequent behavior
 Participants will imitate the behavior of a same sex model to a greater
degree than a model of the opposite sex
 Boys will be more predisposed than girls toward imitating behavior
 Process
o Groups
 Division (72)
 Exposure to violence (24)
o Control
o Aggressive model
o Passive model
 Gender model (6)
o Male
o Female
 Children gender (6)
o Male
o Female
o Sampling
 Challenge
 The number of children in each group is quite small
o Distortion if one group contained a few children who are
normally quite aggressive.
 Solution
 Pretesting the children and assessing their aggressiveness
o Place
 Nursery
o 5-point rating scale
 Components
 Physical aggression
 Verbal aggression
 Aggression towards inanimate objects
 Composite score (Addition of results)
o Observers
 Experimenter
 Nursery schoolteacher
 Well acquainted with the children
 Model for male aggression
o Disadvantage
 Different observers see different things when they
view the same event
o Solution
 51 of children were rated by two observers
working independently and their ratings were
compared.
 High correlation
 Social Cognitive Theory
o We learn from people surrounding us
 Getting rewarded
 Getting punished
o If we identify with the model, we are more likely to imitate the behavior
 Sense of self-efficacy
 We need to observe the rewards or punishments
 We need to identify with model to motivate with the behavior
 We have to have a sense of self-efficacy to create
o Natural experiment
 Introduction of television
 Pretest and posttest design
o Before levels of aggression and after levels of aggression
o Saint Helena
 1995 – Introduction of TV
o Aim
 Investigate how television affects children who have never been exposed to
it
o Sample
 Two primary schools (Age 3 to 8) = 161 children
 Set cameras
 The children’s behavior was observed in 1994 and in 2002
 Research methods
 Observation
 Interviews
o Teachers
o Parents
o Older peers
 Procedure
 Observation of children and their aggression levels on playgrounds
 Deductive content analysis of the violence shown in TV shows
 Interviews
 Results
 No change in aggressive or antisocial behavior
 Control
 Kids in St. Helena were exposed to the same violence as kids in the
UK
 Strengths
 High ecological validity
 Covert observation
o Kids were not aware that they were observed
 Limitations
 They didn’t observe the whole recordings
 oThere is not change in antisocial behavior after the
introduction in TV
 Social desirability effects amongst interviewees
 Joy, Kimbal and Kabrack (1986)
o Impact of TV in children’s aggressive behavior
 Longitudinal natural experiment
o The study was conducted in three small towns in British Columbia, Canada.

 Evaluation points of three studies

o Participation
o Validity
o Ethical considerations
o Reliability
o Validity
o Generalization
o Sample
o Biases
o Nature of the experiment
o Other factors

 Bandura
o Nature
 Experimental design
 Matched pairs design
o Small groups (6)
 Pretested for aggressiveness
 Reduce participant variability
 Type of experiment
 True experiment
 Quasi experiment
 Prospective, cross-sectional
 Setting
 Laboratory
 Target population
 Children
