PSYA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: World War I, Rubber Band, Cleanroom
Document Summary
Experiment involves contrasting behaviour across two (or more) differing conditions that could matter (assessing a theory: should make a difference in the behaviour, shark example having the current on or off. Independent variable changed to create critical difference across condition: we have control of manipulating, shark example presence or absence of the current. Dependent variable reflects behaviour of interest: what we are measuring, shark example aggression, have to be very specific when measuring this. Operational definitions connection between abstract theoretical ideas and concrete variables that can be manipulated or measured: prejudice poor economy i. e. germany had lost wwi anti-semitism. Validity whether one believes that a given operational definition really reflects the theoretical entity it is meant to represent: prejudice or self-esteem how its manipulated. Reliability refers to how accurately the dependent variable can be measured: how aggressive the shark is, can be measured and quantified, i. e. measuring with tape versus a rubber band varies with the rubber band.
