PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Operational Definition, Scientific Method, Confounding

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jill L Atkinson

Document Summary

The scientific method is used by psychologist so that they can explore behaviour and mental processes in a way that is verifiable, reliable, and objective. Verifiability = a theory is verifiable if it can be tested by others. Objectivity = a result is objective if it is based on observable phenomena and is uninfluenced by emotions or personal points of view. If you perform an experiment or engage in any form of research and get a result, Someone else should be able to perform the same experiment and get the same. If the result is not due to chance, it should be found consistently by the experimenter and anyone else using the same methods. Explain the five principal steps of the scientific method: formulate a hypothesis, design a study, collect the data, analyze the data and obtain results, draw conclusions about the results; update/form theories; share your findings with scientific community.