Psychology 2800E Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Statistical Inference, Dependent And Independent Variables, Caffeine

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2800E
• Professor: Patrick Brown

Document Summary

Essentially a way of establishing that two individuals( or groups or conditions) are identical except for the variable of interest. Used in two rather different ways: as standard of comparison, as a way of reducing variability. Control provides a standard of comparison: the first and fundamental meaning of the term control is that of providing a standard against which to compare the effect of a particular independent variable. Experimental group subjects in an experiment who receives treatment. Control group subjects in between subjects design experiment who are like the experimental group in every respect except that they do not receive treatment. Control can be achieved without a control group: the group that receives the drug will now be both groups so a1 will get 5mg of caffeine and a2 will get 10mg. There is control over how much caffeine is given.