RESEARCH METHODS Module 2

 What is the one easy way to improve a relationship?  What makes people do the same stupid things repeatedly?  Does emotional intelligence make a person smart?  Is there a relationship between the decline in child play and the rise in mental illness?

A method of learning about the world through the application of critical thinking and tools such as observation, experimentation, and statistical analysis Scientific Method

Just common sense???  Opposites attract….. BUT WAIT!  Birds of a feather flock together.  Out of sight, out of mind… BUT WAIT!  Absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained. BUT WAIT!  A penny saved is a penny earned.

Psychology is an experimental science  Claims MUST be supported by evidence SCIENTIFIC METHOD: 1. Form a research Question 2. Form a Hypothesis 3. Test the hypothesis 4. Analyze the results 5. Draw Conclusions & report findings

Observations!  What is it?  What are the advantages?  What are the disadvantages?

Things to consider…  Confirmation bias: tendency to focus on info that supports preconceptions  Critical thinking: thinking that does NOT blindly accept conclusions  Participant bias: participants act in a certain way because they know they are being watched  Naturalistic bias: observing behavior in a naturally occurring environment (example: watching a couple out to eat at a restaurant) Shall we take a walk?!

Who is Ms. Keaveney??

Case Studies  In depth study of ONE person

Correlational Study  Designed to discover if two variables are related to one another People that drink diet soda have a higher incidence of depression.  Correlation does NOT equal Causation

Surveys  Techniques that questions a sample of people to collect information about their attitudes or behaviors  Advantages?  Disadvantages?  Population  Sample

Children of two-parent families are more highly to graduate high school than children of divorced parents.

 Longitudinal studies: follow the same group of people over a long period of time  Cross-sectional studies: compares people of different ages at one time

Experiments!  The ONLY method that allows us to draw conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships

People that eat Nutella are happier than people that do not eat Nutella. Can we TEST this??? Hypothesis: a testable prediction about the outcome in research

Important Concepts…  Operational definitions  Replication  Independent variable  Dependent variable  Experimental group  Control group  Random assignment

Any problems??  Hypothesis: Students that listen to music while they study perform better on exams than students that do not study with music.

Can expectations REALLY affect studies???  Double-blind procedure  Placebo

Ethical Guidelines 1. Informed consent 2. The right to be protected from harm and discomfort 3. The right to confidentiality 4. The right to debriefing

Statistics: Central Tendency  Mean - average  Median – middle number  Mode – most occurring number

Statistically Significant??  Ok…you run the experiment. You have the results. Do they actually matter? Do they show anything?  Difference BETWEEN groups would occur by chance alone is no more than 5%  **If we find a big difference between two large groups and small variations in results within each group…it’s statistically significant!**