Term
| what makes research scientific |
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Definition
1. precision
2. skepticism
3. reliance on empirical evidence
4. willings to make risky predictions and principle of falsibility
5. openness in the scientific community so that findings can be replicated |
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Term
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Definition
detailed description of particular individuals
advantage: include producing detailed picture of one individual
disadvantage: rely on possibly inaccurate memories, cannot generalize to all human behavior do not test hypotheses |
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Definition
observing, recording behavior without interfering
Naturalistic observation
laboratory observation |
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Term
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Definition
| used to find out how people or animals act in their normal environment |
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Definition
| scientist has greater control but subject might alter his or her behavior |
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Definition
objective tests
projective tests |
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Definition
| measures beliefs, feelings, or behaviors of which an individual is aware |
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Term
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Definition
| designed to tap unconscious |
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Term
| characteristics of a good test |
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Definition
1. standarization: uniform procedures
2. norms: established standards of performance
3. reliability: getting the same results from one time to another
-test-retest
-alternate forms'
4. validity : a test measures what it set out to measure
-content validity
-criterion validity |
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Term
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Definition
gather information by asking people directly
problem: bias in wording, representativeness of sample, volunteer bias, lying or forgetting by subjects |
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Term
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Definition
looking for relatinships
purpose: to determine whether two variables are related, and if so, how strongly
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Term
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Definition
direction of a relationshp
-positive
-negative
correlation coefficient indicates the strength of relationship between the two variables |
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Term
| purpose of experimentation |
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Definition
| to look for causes of behavior because the experiment allows the researcher to control the situation being studied |
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Term
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Definition
the characteristics the researcher is studying
1. independent variable: the characteristic manipulated by the experimenter
2. dependent variable: the behavior the researcher tries to predict |
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Term
| experimental and control conditions |
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Definition
1. experimental condition: the condition or group in which subjects receive some amount of the independent variable
2. control condition: the condition or group in which subjects do not receive any amount of hte independent variable
3. random assignment balances individual differences among subjects between the two groups |
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Term
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Definition
1. single-blind studies: subjects don't know whether they are in the experimental or control group
2. double blind studies: neither the experimenter nor the subjects know which subjects are in which group |
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Term
| culture and research: special challenges |
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Definition
methods and sampling: need to separate cultural differences from simply translational errors
stereotyping: although cultural averages can be found, individual variation still exists within each culture
reification: must try to understand why culture is the way it is, not assume differences are inherent |
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