PSYC 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Operational Definition, Diazepam, Psychopharmacology

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Jill Bee Rich

Document Summary

Important for critical thinking: necessary to be sophisticated consumer. Scientific investigation: formulate a hypothesis, a tentative statement about the relationship between two or more variables, based on previous research, casual observation, or existing theory, design the study, collect data, analyze data and draw conclusions, report the findings. Study design: experimental design: randomly assign participants to valium or placebo group and compare memory abilities. Collect data: administer memory tests to 24 participants on valium and 24 participants on placebo. Analyze & interpret data: memory performance is worse in valium group than placebo group. Representative sample: resembles the general population on selected variables. Random sample: everyone in the population has an equal chance of being selected. Research designs: case study, naturalistic observation, survey. Positive correlation: the values of two variables move in the same direction. Negative correlation: the values of two variables move in opposite directions. No correlation: two variables are uncorrelated when there is no relationship between them.