PSY 2174 – Study sheet

Chapter 1: The scientific study of behaviour

Acquiring knowledge
- Acquiring knowledge by intuition or authority – subject to bias
- Acquiring knowledge using the scientific method
o Uses scientific skepticism (questioning the truth of information and seeking evidence) and empiricism
(gaining knowledge based on structured observation)
o Poses empirical questions
o It is an objective, systematic measure to collect, evaluate and report information

Goals of psychological research

- Describing behaviour (what, when, who, how often)
- Predicting behaviour (when will a behaviour occur)
- Determining the causes (covariation of cause/effect, temporal precedence, no alternative explanation)
- Explaining behaviour (why does it occur or change)

Basic research: answers fundamental questions about the nature of behaviour

Applied research addresses practical, real world problems with the goal of finding a solution

Chapter 2: Research starting points

How to come up with a research idea

- Common assumptions – evidence for/against commonly held beliefs
- Observation – study what you know
- Practical problems – increase awareness, understand or solve current issues
- Theories – organize and explain existing information, and generate new knowledge
- Past research – building on existing studies, filling gaps

Types of research sources

- Empirical studies – primary source, original research paper
- Systematic literature reviews – secondary source, review or summary of existing study
- Meta analyses – secondary source, uses statistical analysis to summarize existing studies

Developing a good hypothesis

- Based on theory or past research findings to conduct further testing or additional research
- Exploratory hypotheses – insufficient past research to develop a clear hypothesis
- Specific hypotheses – predicts an outcome, indicates direction, is falsifiable

Structure of an academic research article

- Abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, references, appendices
Chapter 3: Research design fundamentals

Variable: any event, situation, behaviour or characteristic that can vary in some way

Types of variables
- Situational variable: feature of event/environment that a participant is exposed to
- Response variable: participants response to an event/experience
- Participant variable: pre-existing characteristic of a participant

Operationally defining variables

- Specifies the operation/technique that will be used to represent the variable
- Operational definitions inform measurement, prediction and research design

Basic research designs

- Non-experimental designs: focus on determining the relationship between variables, variables are measures or
observed, includes correlational studies
o Advantages: establish patterns across data, describes behaviour and helps predict future behaviour, used
in cases of ethical issues
o Disadvantages: we can’t indicate direction of causal influence and third variable problem
- Experimental designs: determine causal influences between variables, one variable is manipulated in order to
measure another variable
o Advantages: answer questions about causes of behaviour, high internal validity, more experimental
control
o Disadvantages: lack of external validity, ethical issues

How do experiments allow for causal influences

- Temporal precedence (IV before DV), IV and DV covary (changes in one = changes on the other), eliminate
alternative explanations

Chapter 4: Sampling and measurement

Sampling techniques
- Probability sampling
o Simple random sampling: random selection from a population
o Stratified random sampling: random selection from subgroups of a population
o Cluster sampling: clusters of people are identified from a population
- Non-probability sampling
o Convenience sampling: selected on the basis of availability
o Purposive sampling: selected on the basis of availability and criteria
o Quota sampling: selected on the basis of availability but subgroups are proportionately represented

Quality of measures
- Validity
o Face validity: does it measure the construct of interest?
o Content validity: does it capture all necessary aspects of the construct?
o Predictive validity: do scores predict related criteria measured later?
o Concurrent validity: are scores related to another variable measured at the same time?
o Convergent validity: are scores related to measures examining the same constructs?
o Discriminant validity: are scores unrelated to scores on a measure that examine a different construct?
- Reliability
o Internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha): how consistent is the measure across items measuring the same
concept?
o Test-retest reliability: how consistent is the measure across time?
o Inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s kappa) : how consistent is the measure across different raters?
 - Reactivity – the degree to which participant behaviours change as a result of measuring it

Chapter 5: Research ethics

Research ethics
- Focus on analyzing ethical questions pertaining to conducting research and ensuring the well-being of participants

Core ethical principles for research with humans

- Respect for persons: autonomy and informed consent (not required with observation, deception or special
populations)
- Concern for welfare: minimize risk to participants with risk-benefit analysis
- Justice: fair and equitable treatment where participants have access to benefits of the research and participation

Institutional research ethics board (REB)

- Review proposed studies procedures and deem them ethically acceptable or unacceptable
o No REB review, no risk: observational methods, archival data, literature reviews and meta-analyses
o Single REB member review, minimal risk: survey studies
o Full REB review, greater than minimal risk: self-harm behaviour, illicit drug use, vulnerable populations
- The review process for REB: apply, review, revise, approve

Professional ethics
- Data fraud: fabricating or altering data to influence the outcome of a study
- Unethical data analysis: misreporting/changing results of tests to influence the outcome of a study
- Publication reform: change to improve transparency and accountability within the research process

Chapter 6: Observational methods

Types of data
- Quantitative data: numeric data that are statistically analyzed
- Qualitative data: non-numeric data that are analyzed for meanings, themes or pattern
- Mixed data: combination of quantitative and qualitative methods

Naturalistic observation
- Systematic observations in a natural setting – data can be quantitative or qualitative
- Participant observation or non-participant observation
o Advantages: high external validity, rich information
o Disadvantages: lack of control, time consuming, observer bias and increased reactivity

Structured observation
- Observation of participants in a controlled setting – data is quantitative
- Uses coding schemes (set of rules that define what behaviours to identify and how) and inter-rater reliability
o Advantages: high external validity, experimental control
o Disadvantages: observer bias, increased reactivity

Case studies
- Detailed descriptive observation of behaviour from a single case – data is usually qualitative
o Advantages: detailed information, used when other methods are impossible/unethical
o Disadvantages: low external validity, observer bias
Chapter 7: Self-report methods

Questionnaire research
- A set of questions answered by participants regarding attitudes or behaviours – data can be qualitative or
quantitative, questions can be open-ended or closed-ended

- Issues in questionnaire research

o Rely on participants responses: social desirability bias, careless responding or misunderstanding questions
o Using an existing questionnaire versus creating your own: good question wording and response choices,
need to establish reliability and validity

- Advantages: affordable, good for large samples, anonymity, flexibility

- Disadvantages: risk of collecting biased or untruthful data is higher

Interview research
- A data collection approach where researchers ask participants questions orally

- Issue in interview research

o Subject to interviewer bias: subtle reinforcement of responses, social desirability bias, personal
characteristics, experimenter expectancy effect
- Types of interviews
o Face to face interviews: good for small samples, qualitative or quantitative data
o Telephone interviews: adaptable to larger samples, qualitative or quantitative data
o Focus groups: rich data but lengthy process, qualitative data

- Advantages: rich information, can confirm participant understanding, can detect careless responses
- Disadvantages: time and resource intensive, interviewer bias, challenge of consistency

Chapter 8: Basic experimental designs

Experimental designs aim to determine causal influences

- Independent variable: manipulated variable that causes changes in behaviour
- Dependant variable: measured variable that is changed by the independent variable
- Confounding variable: variables that are connected to the independent variable that could explain the change in
dependant variable

Types of experimental designs

- Between subject design: different participants are assigned to each level or condition of the independent variable
– examples include experimental vs. control group, treatment vs. placebo, IV level 1 vs. IV level 2
o Advantages: allows for causal inference, useful when exposure to multiple levels of IV is unrealistic
o Disadvantages: selection differences could affect results, more participants needed

- Within-subject design: the same participants are assigned to each level or condition of the independent variable –
example includes pre-intervention vs. after intervention
o Advantages: allows for causal inference, fewer participants needed, individual differences are not an
issue, can detect small differences
o Disadvantages: order effects, participants may change behaviour, exposure to multiple levels may not be
possible

Reducing selection differences

- Random assignment: randomly selected participants for each IV condition
- Pretest-posstest design: DV measured before and after manipulation of the IV
- Matched pairs design: sorted into pairs by matching characteristics and randomly assigned to an IV condition
Chapter 9: Quasi-experimental designs

One-group design
- No comparison group – the independent variable only has one level/condition
o Advantages: better internal validity than other non-experimental designs, sometimes the only option
o Disadvantages: poorer internal validity than experimental designs

Non-equivalent groups design

- Includes comparison group, but participants are not randomly assigned to independent variable levels/conditions
to create groups – limits causal inference
- Higher risk of selection differences because groups are pre-existing
- Use of pretest-posstest design allows us to compare results but still allows some risk of alternative explanation for
results – limits interval validity

Why use a quasi-experimental design?

- Control group or random assignment to groups is not possible or would be unethical
- Can have higher external validity than experimental designs
- Goal is to describe or predict behaviour

Threats to interval validity

- History: different effects of the event
- Maturation: differences of maturation = group differences
- Testing: pretest influences results of posttest
- Regression to the mean: extreme scores are less extreme with repeated measurement = change in posstest scores
- Attrition: leaving the study before completion = group differences
- Selection effects: pre-existing groups = group differences
- Cohort effect: group division by age = unique characteristics of age

Chapter 10: Complex experimental designs

Basic experimental designs can be modified to have…

- 1 IV with more than 2 levels/conditions
- More than 1 IV, each with 2 or more levels or conditions

Factorial research designs

- Have 2 or more IVS, each of which has 2 or more levels or conditions
- The IV is often called a factor
- Main effect: the effect of each individual IV on the DV
- Interaction effect: the combined effect of the 2 IVS on the DV

3 types of factorial research designs

- Fully between subjects
o All between-subjects IVs
- Fully within subjects
o All within subjects IVs
- Mixed factorial design
o At least 1 between subjects IV and at least 1 within subjects IV

Choosing an experimental design

- Research question, hypotheses and operational definitions
- Resources
- Parsimony
Chapter 11: Quantitative data analysis

Descriptive statistics
- Summarize, organize and simplify
- Visual representation (graph, table)
- Measures of central tendency – mean, median, mode
- Measures of variability – range, standard deviation
- Frequencies – nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio

Inferential statistics
- Test research hypothesis
- Allows researchers to draw conclusions about their hypotheses
- Use sample data to generalize to population

How to choose a statistical analysis

- What is the goal of the study?
o Describing behaviour vs. making inferences about the population
- What scale of measurement was used for variables?
o Nominal
o Ordinal
o Interval
o Ratio
- Are you comparing across groups/conditions or examining relationships?
o Across groups: T-tests, ANOVA – experimental and quasi-experimental
o Examining relationships: chi-square tests, loglinear, correlation, regression – non-experimental
- How often did you measure each participant?
o Independent measures data: each participant = 1 score/variable (between subjects)
o Repeated measures data: each participant = 2+ scores/variable (within subjects)

Steps of analyzing data

- Make a data analytic plan, check and clean your data, data reduction, examine the data, test hypotheses, interpret
statistical results and share findings

Chapter 12: Generalizing research findings

- Population: the entire group of interest
- Sample: smaller group of people who represent the population in the study

Generating beyond the sample

- Reliance on volunteers
o Selection bias: those who are willing to participate may be different than those who choose not to
participate
o Self-selection bias: those who choose to participate may have more personal interest in the topic which
could influence behaviour/response
- Issues of generalizing across gender identities
o Overrepresentation of cis women in psych research
o Underrepresentation of trans and non-binary gender identities
- Issues of generalizing across culture, ethnicities and racial groups
o Over-reliance on western culture and white research participants

Generalizing beyond the research study

- Do other studies obtain similar results (researcher bias)
- Do the research findings hold outside of a laboratory setting (designed to have high external validity)

Improving generalizability
- Replication of the study (direct or conceptual)
- Metanalysis (effect size) – publication bias