PSY 240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Demand Characteristics, External Validity, Internal Validity

• School: Stony Brook University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 240
• Professor: Marci Lobel

Document Summary

Makes sure that the people we observe are representative of the population. Conduct research to confirm a hypothesis or explore: confirmatory research vs. exploratory research. C: humans are not objective and we form impressions of situations or tasks from just a few observations. Our biases can influence the conclusions that we make about. Experiment: random assignment, manipulation of a variable, independent variable affects the dependent variable. C: both are important but the only design that can link the effect of one variable on another is an experiment; however, correlational studies are still beneficial because they help us make associations between variables. Researcher goes to participants: external validity confident that what we learn we can generalize; generalizability. Observing: what we want to study may be rare, intentions of certain behavior is unknown. Archives: use data that was collected previously, doesn"t contain questions that is sufficient for your research, saves time, money and allows you to see trends.