Psychology 2820E Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Illusory Correlation, Confidence Interval, Regression Analysis

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2820E
• Professor: Richard

Document Summary

In many instances we want to form confidence intervals that are fairly narrow and yet have a high level of confidence. It is possible to form such confidence intervals if the survey sample size is predetermined. One of the key components in the understanding of any behaviour is identifying the variables that are related to the behaviour. In correlational relationships, the values of the two variables covary. Using the existence of a correlational relationship as the basis of prediction involves what is called regression analysis. Aka third variable problem: leads to illusory correlation, the existence of a correlation does not provide any information about the potential direction of the relationship, selection bias can also lead to spurious correlations. The primary objective of correlational research is to determine whether there is a relationship between two measures: this type of data is called bivariate since the two measurements are involved.