Sociology 2233 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Internal Validity, Random Assignment, External Validity
2 Jan 2020
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Week 2: methodology: how social psychologists do research. Social psychology: an empirical science: empirical research allows to test the validity of personal observations, social psychology relies on three types of methods: observational, correlational, and experimental. Involves systematic observation and measurement of behaviour: a drawback to the observational method is how some behaviours only occur in private. The variable that is manipulated by the researcher the variable that is presumed to cause the change in the other variable. The variable that is measured by the researcher to see if changes dependent on the level of the independent variable. Internal validity in experiments: an experiment has high internal validity when everything is the same in the different levels of the independent variable, except for the one factor in concern. Internal validity is established by controlling all extraneous variables and by using random assignment to conditions: random assignment: describes how each participant has an equal chance of being selected.
