PSYCH 100A Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Confounding, Dependent And Independent Variables, Psychometrics
Document Summary
Variable: an attribute that takes on different values across persons. In psychology: emotion, personality, iq, belief systems, interpersonal relationships, etc. The outcome (dependent) variable is the focal variable of interest in a research study. An explanatory variable (independent) influences the outcome variable. Measuring psychological variables that are not directly observable. Participation in one of three experiment conditions (explanatory variable) is presumed to influence attitudes towards vaccinations (dependent) Interval & ratio require the same analysis procedures, so we treat them the same. Nominal scale: responses are grouped into mutually exclusive categories with no inherent rank order. Ordinal scale: responses are grouped into categories that can be rank ordered. The difference between a b and a c letter grade is not the same amount of knowledge as the difference between an a and a b. Interval and ratio scales: responses are numeric and approximate a number line continuous measure . Reflect equal amounts between consecutive score values.
