PSYCH 201W
Summer 2013
Psychology 201W: Introduction to Research Methods
Operational Definitions, Variables, Relationships Between Variables
Announcements:
- Research Project Outline due this week beginning of labs. Late penalties: one mark
off per day.
- Course is not curved.
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Review on Last Week’s Lecture:
- Ethics
- Tuskegee Study = Landmark Study, a real case where participants’ rights were
ignored and their wellbeing were completely ignored as well. The researchers had
good intentions but their execution was bad.
- Milgram Obedient Study, a great source of conversation about ethics as well as
some other issues related to psychology.
- Responsibility to participants:
Beneficence
Autonomy
Justice
- Responsibility to colleagues and the public
Data Fabrication
Misleading Research Reports
Plagiarism
Offensive Behaviour Towards Participants
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Q: What makes a Correlational Study?
- The independent variable (IV) is not manipulated it is measured.
Operational Definitions, Variables, Relationships Between Variables:
- To understand operational definitions and the context of this discipline, you have
to know:
Psychology is a relatively young discipline (started as a scientific
discipline in Germany 1879).
Germany 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt started some of the first
experimental labs in Germany.
Studies were short-term memory studies, they started of being focused
into consciousness
Trying to figure out what consciousness was made of.
Short-term memory studies were designed to see what could be retained
during consciousness, this led to a lot of research on consciousness in
psychology and how it relates, various components of consciousness. PSYCH 201W
Summer 2013
Problem: Consciousness is an entity that is abstract (hypothetical entity –
we assume it to exist).
It is abstract, not physical – not directly observable.
There was a struggle to establish psychology as a science.
Debate whether psychology should move away from studying
consciousness.
Psychology went from studying consciousness to studying behaviours
because it was directly observable and measureable.
Consciousness thinking about it as “cognition”.
Need to link consciousness to physical entities (e.g. Mass, Force).
Study abstract entities as long as they can be linked to the physical realm.
The idea of Operational Definitions came from physics.
- The manifestations of behaviour
- Have to link abstract entities to the physical realm.
- It has a routed the history of the discipline.
Operational Definition: A definition of a concept that specifies the operation is
used to measure or manipulate the concept or interest.
- Gives instructions and measurements so that your study can be replicated.
- Every variable used must be operationalized, in order to study it with some
objectivity.
- Restrict the discussion to things that are observable and measureable.
- Have to be able to specify the conditions where the phenomena of interest
(whatever it is) can be observed.
Class Example: “Freudian Concept of Repression“
- Resists operational definitions
Resisting Operational Definitions:
- Unless we can operationally define, whatever entity or concept we’re interested in
– then it is almost impossible to come up with some kind of test that can be
disconfirmed or at least disconfirm the concept we are interested in.
- Doesn’t really adhere to the basic rules of science.
- Operational Definitions avoid that problem of not being able to disconfirm
hypothesis by specifying the conditions under which the phenomenon can occur.
Advantages of Operational Definitions:
- Objectivity: Doesn’t adhere to the basic rules of Science.
- Repeatability of Research: Gives procedures and definitions so that we can
research and other people can replicate our studies.
- Precision: Increase of precision, reduces any type of misinterpretation. PSYCH 201W
Summer 2013
“Correct vs. Useful” definitions
- Concepts can be operationally defined in a number of different ways.
- Not about whether it is correct, it’s about utility – is it “useful”?
Class Example:
- Use manifest anxiety scale.
- Magnitude of anxiety.
- Heart rate
- Shoe size
How do we know if it is “Useful”?
- Do research, what is out there in the literature.
- Try our best to come with the
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