PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Research, Confounding, Naturalistic Observation

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Russell Day

Document Summary

Psyc 100 - lecture 5 - research methods in psychology. Only way we can determine cause & effect. Research method in which investigator manipulates variable under controlled conditions. & observes whether changes occur in second variable. Allows us to establish cause & effect if everything works out. Outcome becomes restricted in terms of opportunity to generalize to larger population b/c artificial situation. If things found out with limited range of people in artificial situation, will not be meaningful. Call that because we vary it independently of other factors. To see if it has effect on other variable of interest. Hoped that it will vary as result of impact of independent variable. Only in experiment, is one variable manipulated. Have influence on independent variable that cannot be accounted for, controlled, accurately estimated. We must find way to balance needs of logic of experiment w/ goal of trying to say something meaningful. Iv must temporarily precede dv in time.