PSY 210 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Hindsight Bias, Convenience Sampling, Random Assignment
28 Apr 2016
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How social psychologists test ideas: theory. Related propositions intended to describe some aspect of the world. Eg. guys are taller than girls: hypothesis. A prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances. Observational research: very simple and involves simply observing participants in social situations. Eg. curious how people live in the amazon. Archival research: data already collected and analyzing this previously recorded data. Data could be newspapers, hospital records for example: can be used to test theories about social behavior. Use archives to get data and test theory. Surveys: asking participants questions, choose people randomly for unbiased sample. Avoid convenience sampling: for example asking people that enter the library or members from a sorority = bias = not representative of population. Correlations research: research w/o random assignment for different variables. Use this research to determine relationship among variables: correlation does not mean causation! Eg. ice cream sales go up in summer and so does drowning.
