PSYC 215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Sampling Bias, External Validity, Statistical Significance

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 215
• Professor: Lauren Human

Document Summary

Every person has an equal chance of being studies. Recruiting participants based on who we can find and who agrees. For example, contacting people as they enter the library or using the participant pool. May not be completely random, may get a non representative sample. How random your sample is can affect your results. If we don"t have random sampling, our results may be biased. If cannot get a random sample, could run your study in a very different sample. Experiments can determine causation because variables are controlled. But manipulating the situation may limit the validity of the results. An indication of how well the results of a study generalize to. An indication of how well the results of a study generalize to contexts beside those of the study itself. Participants usually not aware they are in a study. In experimental research, confidence that only the manipulated variable could have produced the results.