PSY 350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Experiment, Psy
Document Summary
When we need to rule out alternative explanations, we often use experimental research. *a study is a true experiment when and only when: at least one variable is manipulated, determined by the researchers, participants are randomly assigned to a value of that variable. *if you can"t randomly assign participants to a value or level of your variable, you don"t have an experiment. Well-executed experiments are very good at ruling out alternative explanations, and therefore they are useful when we need to make claims about cause and effect. We don"t always need to make claims about cause and effect. Sometimes, we are interested in description, or prediction, and identifying the exact causal mechanism isn"t the main question we need to answer. Sometime we are interested in variables that we cannot manipulate or randomly assign. Correlational research studies variables as they naturally occur. The group of people you want to be able to make conclusions about.
