PS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Statistical Inference, Sampling Bias, Dental Caries
Document Summary
Chapter 2 + app b: research/statistics in psychology. Taking the theory and making it more specific. State the actual relationship how do pets reduce blood pressure. Operational definitions: describes the actions or operations that are going to be used to measure or control a variable. By creating specific definitions of measurement, we avoid ambiguity. The operational definition of a pet is described as a cat or dog, from an animal shelter. Final hypothesis: adopting a dog or cat from a shelter decreases blood pressure. Manipulate something (independent variable) adopting a dog or cat. Control other things: good control group or, random assignment. Measure an outcome (dependent variable) measuring bp in this study. If all else is equal, then our manipulation caused outcome. Reducing extraneous variables: other than the independent variable that could influence the dependent variable, examples: stress, weight, sick pet, money. Extraneous varibales are reduced by ensuring they occur equally across groups.
