PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Myelin, Statistical Inference, Axon Terminal

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Penelope Kostopoulos

Document Summary

Pro: ability to discover range of behaviors and situations they occur in. Pro: allows investigation that is otherwise inaccessible. Correlational - determine strength and relationship between two variables. Reports/surveys : a representative sample polled on particular issues. Pro: potential for external validity ( but only with a large and representative sample) Con: must assume people have insight & can answer honestly. Experimental design - measuring the effect of independent variables on dependent variables. Random assignment of participants( into experimental and control groups) Pro: potential for high external validity if there is random sampling & random assignment, no confounding effects, placebo effect minimized. Reliability : measurements are consistent when retested; data raters are consistent. Validity : is test really measuring what it claims to be. **a test must be reliable in order to be valid. Descriptive statistics : organize and summarize data. Inferential statistics - analyze data after an experiment to determine if independent variable has signi cant effect.