Manipulation and Measurement of Variables Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology.
Psychology as a science Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology.
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Transcript of Psychology as a science Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology.
Psychology as a science
Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology
Announcements
For this week’s lab you need to download, print out, read, and bring to lab an article.– The article is: Strayer & Johnston (2001)– It can be downloaded from the Milner
library page:http://www.mlb.ilstu.edu/
The anatomy of a research article
Method - tells the reader exactly what was done Enough detail that the reader could actually replicate
the study. Subsections:
Participants - who were the data collected from Apparatus/ Materials - what was used to conduct the
study Procedure - how the study was conducted, what the
participants did
The anatomy of a research article
Reading checklist for Methods1 a) Is your method better than theirs? b) Does the authors method actually test the hypotheses? c) What are the independent, dependent, and control variables? 2) Based on what the authors did, what results do YOU expect?
The anatomy of a research article
Results - gives a summary of the results and the statistical tests Reading checklist
1) Did the author get unexpected results?
2 a) How does the author interpret the results?
b) How would YOU interpret the results?
c) What implications would YOU draw from these results?
The anatomy of a research article
Discussion - the interpretation and implications of the results Reading checklist
1 a) Does YOUR interpretation or the authors' interpretation best represent the data?
b) Do you or the author draw the most sensible implications and conclusions?
References - full citations of all work cited Appendices - additional supplementary
supporting material
Psychology as a science
Psychology’s goals are similar to the goals of the physical sciences (e.g., physics and chemistry)
Psychologists are concerned with the behavior of people (and animals) rather than the physical world.
Psychology as a science
How is psychology different from the physical sciences?– One big difference is that human behavior (and
animals) is typically much more variable than most physical systems.
• To address this in part, we use a lot of statistical procedures.
• We also do as much as we can to reduce variability by using various methods of control.
Goals of psychology
Description of behavior – describe events, what changes what might affect
change, what might be related to what, etc.
Prediction of behavior – given X what will likely happen
Control of behavior – for the purpose of interventions (e.g., how do we
prevent violence in schools)
Goals of psychology
Causes of behavior – sometimes predictions aren’t enough, want to
know how the X and the outcome are related Explanation of behavior
– a complete theory of the how’s and why’s
Properties of a good theory
Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data– If there are data relevant to your theory, that your
theory can’t account for, then your theory is wrong• either adapt the theory to account for the new data • develop a new theory that incorporates the new data
Properties of a good theory
Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable – can’t prove a theory,
can only reject it
–our research goal is not to prove theories, but rather to disconfirm them. Results may “support” theories, but not “prove” them.
Support, not proof Einstein: “No amount of experimentation can
ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
“All dogs have four legs”– hard to prove, need to examine all the dogs that
exist (and have existed). – To disconfirm all we need to do is find one dog
which doesn’t have four legs
Omnipotent Theory
Beware theories that are so powerful/ general/ flexible that they can account for everything. These are not testable– Karl Popper claimed that Freudian theory isn’t falsifiable
• If display behavior that clearly has sexual or aggressive motivation, then it is taken as proof of the presence of the Id
• If such behavior isn’t displayed, then you have a “reaction formation” against it. So the Id is there, you just can’t see evidence of it.
– So, as stated, the theory is too powerful and can’t be tested and so it isn’t useful
Properties of a good theory
Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable – not too restrictive
– the theory should be broad enough to be of use, the more data that it can account for the better
– the line between generalizability and falsifiability is a fuzzy one.
Properties of a good theory
Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable Parsimony (Occam’s razor)
– for two or more theories that can account for the same data, the simplest theory is the favored one
Properties of a good theory
Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable Parsimony Makes predictions, generates new knowledge
– a good theory will account for the data, but also make predictions about things that the theory wasn’t explicitly designed to account for
Properties of a good theory
Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable Parsimony Makes predictions, generates new knowledge Precision
– makes quantifiable predictions
Using theories in research
Induction – reasoning from the data to the general theory– So in complete practice this approach probably needs a new
theory (or an adapted one) for every new data set Deduction – reasoning from a general theory to the
data– Here the theory (if it is a “good” one) is sometimes viewed as
more critical than the data. It also will guide the choice of what experiments get done
The chicken or the egg?
Typically good research programs use both
Theory
Data
induction deduction
Research Approaches Basic (pure) research - tries to answer fundamental
questions about the nature of behavior– e.g., McBride & Dosher (1999). Forgetting rates are
comparable in conscious and automatic memory: A process-dissociation study.
Applied research – Theory sometimes takes a backseat. This is research designed to solve a particular problem– e.g., Jin (2001). Advertising and the news: Does advertising
campaign information in news stories improve the memory of subsequent advertisements?
Research Approaches
Probably the best way to think of this is as a continuum rather as two separate categories.
Basic research Applied research
• Often applied work may bring up some interesting basic theoretical questions, and basic theory often informs applied work.
Next time
Basic Methodologies Read Chapters 6 and 7