PSYCO104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Random Assignment, Diederik Stapel, Animal Ethics

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCO104
• Professor: Michele Moscicki

Document Summary

What people do measure and observe. Why they do it look for relationships. Dogmatism: tendency for people to cling to their assumptions even if not supported by evidence. Empiricism: belief that accurate knowledge can be acquired through observation. Theory - set of formal statements that explain how and why certain events are related. Hypothesis - falsifiable prediction made by a theory. Empirical method - set of rules and techniques for observations. Explanations based on common sense, folk knowledge. Operational definition: a description of a property in concrete, measurable terms e. g. terms. Measure: a device that can detect the condition to which an operational definition refers (e. g. questionnaire) Validity: the extent to which a measurement and a property are conceptually related. Reliability: the tendency for a measure to produce the same measurement whenever it is used to measure the same thing. Power: the ability of a measure to detect the concrete conditions specified in the operational definition.