PSYC 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Confounding, The Control Group, External Validity
Document Summary
A process of systematic gathering and evaluating empirical evidence to answer questions ans test ideas. No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. Theory- a broad idea or set of closely related ideas that attempts to explain observations. The more hypotheses that end up supporting a theory, the more credibility the theory gains. Experiment- a researcher manipulates one or more variables that are believed to influence some other variable. Measure how the manipulated variable affect participant"s responses. Divide participants into at least 2 groups (through random assignment) Variable- and factor or attribute that can assume 2 or more values. Dependent variable- the measured value ( the effect) The control group- does not receive the treatment of interest. Confounding variable- things you didn"t control for it (ex. Single-blind procedure- participants are kept unaware of the hypothesis and / or the group theyre assigned to.
