PSYCH101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Naturalistic Observation, Stim, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Paul Wehr

Document Summary

Psychologists then create a research design, a set of methods ds that allows a hypothesis to be tested. Research designs influence how investigators (1) organize the stim- uli used to test the hypothesis, (2) make observations, and (3) evaluate the results. Because several types of designs are available, psychologists must choose the one that best addresses the research question and that is most suitable to the subject of their research. Before we examine differ- ent research designs, we should quickly review the char- acteristics that all of them have in common. A variable is a property of an object, organ- ism, event, or something else that can take on differ- ent values. How frequently you laugh is a variable that could be measured and analyzed. Operational definitions are the details that define the variables for the purposes of a specific study. For sense of humour, this definition might be the score on the coping humour scale.