CHYS 2P10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Developmental Science, Measuring Instrument, Dependent And Independent Variables
14 Sep 2016
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Goal: to understand the science of development, not just psychology. Goals of developmental scientists: describe development, normative development, ideographic (individual) development, explain development, why do individuals develop differently, optimize development, apply research findings to real world . Developmental science: theories lead to hypotheses: scientific method is followed, investigators must be objective, data determine merits of theory. Theories & hypotheses: the common use of fact (e. g. , gravity is a fact), is correctly labeled as a theory in science, a theory is an idea that attempts to account for/explain facts/observations. Correlational study examines the relationship between variables: a correlational study does not control for all other variables, this means that causal inferences can"t be drawn from correlational studies, also, the direction of causality is not known. Descriptive study gather observed data, without attempting to examine the relationships between variables: descriptive studies are even more limited than correlational studies in that one can"t draw predictions or causal inferences from descriptive studies.
