AUPSY102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Naturalistic Observation, Descriptive Statistics, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Augustana Faculty - Psychology
• Course: AUPSY102
• Professor: Katherine Bailey

Document Summary

Goals of scientific enterprise: measurement and description: developing measurement techniques to describe behaviour clearly and precisely, understanding and prediction: a hypothesis is a tentative stats for about the relationship between two or more variables. Theories permit psychologists to leap from description of behaviour to understanding. Precision, skepticism, reliance on empirical evidence, willingness to make risky predictions , openness. Steps in scientific investigation: conceptualize the problem, design the study, data collection, data analysis, report findings, formulate a testable hypothesis: normally hypotheses are expressed as predictions. To be testable, scientific hypotheses must be formulated precisely and the variables under study must be clearly defined. Operational definitions describe the actions or operations that will be used to measure or control a variable. Operational definitions establish exactly what is meant by each variable in the context of a study: select the research method and design the study: hypothesis must now be put to an empirical test.