PSY 121 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Confounding, Operational Definition, Spurious Relationship
Document Summary
Someone is confronted with information and must make a decision about the extent to which the information is valid. Scientists are also concerned about the validity of their research findings. Construct validity concerns whether or not methods of studying variables are accurate. Internal validity refers to the accuracy of conclusions about cause and effect. External validity concerns whether we can generalize the findings of a study to other settings. A variable is any event, situation, behavior, or individual characteristic that varies. Any variable must have two or more levels or values. We all encounter variables continuously in our lives even though we don"t formally use the term. Examples of variables a psychologist might study include cognitive task performance, depression, intelligence, reaction time, rate of forgetting, aggression, speaker credibility, attitude change, anger, stress, age, and self-esteem. For some variables, the values will have true numeric, or quantitative properties.
