PSYCH 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Demand Characteristics, Dependent And Independent Variables, Mindo
Document Summary
Psych 111 - lecture 2 - the research enterprise in psychology. Theory: a systematic way of organizing and understanding observations. Hypothesis: a proposed relationship between two variables. Variable: anything which can be measured or described along a particular dimension. Continuous variable: a variable which can be measured across a continuum. Categorical variable: a variable with a fixed meaning or attribute. Operationalize definitions: label and describe the variables of interest. Research methods in five easy steps (similar to the scientific method) Test if students do better on an exam when they"ve eaten something. Put out a snickers bar for each student and see if those who ate it did better on the exam. Peanut allergy, doesn"t like snickers bar, is on a diet, is full. To test out certain theories of mind. Dependent variable measured to assess any change in response. Subjects: random sample which represents the population as a whole. Sampling bias: skewed samples will give results which don"t generalize.
