PSY 105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Descriptive Statistics, Tanning Bed, Dependent And Independent Variables
15 Oct 2015
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What is a science: two core beliefs of science; The universe operates according to natural laws, ex/gravity. Such laws are discoverable and testable: the scientific method uses logical reasoning derived from philosophy; Sir francis bacon avoiding bias: shouldn"t be based only on your opinion. Karl popper a good theory must be able to be proven false: it must be falsifiable: must be able to test the prediction. How do psychologists do research: *figure 2-1 in text, between step 2 and 3; get ethics approval. Operational definitions in the hypothesis: an operational definition is how we (the researcher) decides to measure our variables. There are usually many ways to measure a variable (ex/ sense of humor) When you do research, you have to decide how you are going to measure the variables. Two basic types of research: descriptive. Research method used to observe and describe behaviour. Used to determine the existence of a relationship between variables.
