PSYCH101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Null Hypothesis, Statistical Significance, Falsifiability

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Stephanie Denison

Document Summary

Exploratory research the idea of first exploring in exploratory research will eventually lead to theory testing. Psychologists are trying to get towards theory testing explore a phenomenon that has no predefined theories. Theory testing test theories about cause-effect relationships among variables. How things behave and correlate some testing only includes collecting data. Organize and explain existing facts, that are based on experiments and empirical research and make predictions about something that has yet to be discovered: example: sadness/low mood delays someone"s studies and ability to learn. Generate a hypothesis: a prediction about processes that can be measured or observed. Research hypothesis: a testable predictive statement. Null hypothesis: no statistical significance exists in a set of given observations, no relationship. Getting information without proper experiments/analysis is not empirical evidence. Placebo effect: a beneficial effect because they believe that they"ll get that benefit. Primary goal is to determine if one variable is predicted by one or more variable.