PSYC 217 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Confounding, Dependent And Independent Variables, Operational Definition
Document Summary
A research idea can and often is broken down into a set of variables. Variable = any situation, event, behavior or individual characteristic that varies that is, has at least two values. If a researcher is interested in sleep and memory; sleep and memory are the main two variables. There are others such as gender, age, intelligence, happiness, etc. that the researcher is interested in. Variables are measured in either levels or values: numeric: how many did the participant get correct, non-numeric: what gender is the participant. There are two basic research designs that study the relationship that two or more variables have: the experimental and the non-experimental. Non-experimental method: use of measurement of variables to determine whether variables are related to one another. Also called correlational method: in this method, relationships are studied by observing/measuring the variables of interest. This approach may have involve asking people questions, recording physiological responses, or examining various public records.
