PSC 151 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Mary Ainsworth, Dependent And Independent Variables, Parenting Styles
Document Summary
Observing behavior as it occurs in its natural context w/o influencing it. Observing behavior often leads to generating theories. Ex: observing - people watching / eavesdropping. Ex: mary ainsworth observing parents interact w/ their young children. Observational research can be scientific and systematic. Use multiple observers who code the behavior independently. Provides better sense that the objective truth is being recorded. People are biased, so it"s more reliable when multiple people get same result. Correlations range from -1 (strong negative correlation) to 1 (strong positive correlation) Few correlations approach -1 or 1 in reality. Ex: number of children & marital satisfaction are negatively correlated. Use random selection to obtain a random sample drawn from the population of interest. A. eating ice cream causes people to engage in violent crime. Engaging in violent crime causes people to eat ice cream. C. both violent crime & ice cream eating are increased by heat. D. you can not determine causality from correlational research.
