PSY BEH 9 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Institutional Review Board, Blind Experiment, Central Tendency
17 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
The descriptive method of accurately and impartially recording behavior includes naturalistic observations, intensive case studies of particular individuals, and surveys asking people about their attitudes and behaviors. The correlation coefficient, abbreviated as r, quantifies covariance between two variables. Positively correlated variables tend to go up and down together. If one variable tends to go down when the other goes up, they are negatively correlated. The value of r varies from 1. 0, for variables displaying perfect negative correlation, to. If there"s no correlation, r will be about zero. Although two variables may be strongly correlated, that does not prove that either actually affects the other. A hypothesis is a tentative explanation for a relationship between two or more variables. Occam"s razor is a principle suggesting that among competing hypotheses, the one requiring the fewest assumptions should be favored. Experimentation is the process of manipulating an independent variable to look for changes in one or more dependent variables.
