PSYCH 1X03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Dependent And Independent Variables, Paradigm Shift, Descriptive Statistics
18 May 2017
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Document Summary
The scientific method: construct a theory, collect a general set of ideas about the way the world works, generate a hypothesis. Publish articles in scholarly journals: revise existing theories. Incorporate new information into our understanding of the world. Theories that define our current world are sometimes challenged and revised to account for new findings. Every so often, there is a paradigm shift. E. g. in 1543 when copernicus challenged the idea that the earth was at the center of the universe. When testing a hypothesis: a single experience might not be representative of all experiences, cannot be sure that the result is due to the variable you"re testing alone. Personal experience might not be representative of others. Within-subjects design: manipulating the independent variable within each participant to minimize the effect of external variables on the dependent measure. Between subjects design: one groups acts as the control group and a different group acts as the experimen- tal group.
