PSY 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Psych, Operational Definition, Convenience Sampling
Document Summary
Provide a way of evaluating research against a standard. Intuition, deduction, authority, observation is most impt. way of knowing. Intuition is relying on common sense, judgment, anecdote (gut reaction) Deduction uses logical reasoning and knowledge of the past (process steps) Authority relies on what ya hear from some smart person/group. Observation relies on what one observes as a means of knowing about the world (careful & systematic) Obs. sets scientific fields apart from other fields of study (ex: history) Obs. allows us to understand & explain b. Use other techniques to infer info about bs that can"t be obs"d. Purpose of this course is to understand good methods that allow us to observe b. Science that investigates bs, mental processes, and their causes. Therefore a psychologist studies b thru research (ex: observation) Parsimony is that the simplest explanation is most likely correct. Testability is we need to use observation to try and falsify something.
