PSYC 111 Lecture 2: Research Designs
27 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Naturalistic Observations:
Watching participants' behavior in real-world settings without trying to manipulate their actions. By
doing so, we can better understand the range of behaviors displayed by individuals in the real world as
well as the situations in which they occur. The major advantage is that they are often high in external
validity: the extent that our findings generalize to real-world settings. It is low in internal validity: the
extent to which we can draw cause and effect inferences.
Case Study:
Researchers examine one person or a small number of people, often over an extended period of time.
Some researchers might simply observe, others might administer questionnaires, or take repeated
interviews. They are helpful in providing existence proofs: demonstrations that a given psychological
phenomenon can occur. They are helpful in studying rare or unusual phenomenon that cannot be
recreated in a laboratory such as a brain injury. Finally, case studies can provide insights that researchers
can follow up on and test in systematic investigations. This can help in generating hypotheses. However,
case studies can lead to wrong conclusions which makes their usage limited. It has low internal validity.
Self-Report Measures and Surveys:
They are often called questionnaires, to assess a variety of characteristics such as personality traits,
mental illnesses, and interests. Surveys are used to measure people's opinions and attitudes. They can
be tricky to interpret but can be helpful if designed and administrated well. The key elements are:
Random Selection: Researchers use random selection for surveys. It means that every person in
the population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate. This is crucial if we want to
generalize our results to the broader population. If it isn't random, the responses can be skewed
and inaccurate.
Evaluating measures: A measure should be reliable and valid.
oReliability refers to consistency of measurement, that is, it yields similar scores over
time. This type of reliability is called test-retest reliability. We can measure this by
administering a personality test and then readminister it after 2 months. If the measure is
reasonably reliable, the results will be pretty similar at both times.
oInterrater reliability is the extent to which different people who conduct an interview
agree on the characteristics they're measuring. The score has to be consistent among them.
oValidity is the extent to which a measure assesses what it claims to measure.
oConvergent validity is the degree to which different tests measuring the same construct
yield similar results.
They are easy to administer and are helpful for things that are easy to think about. However, they
assume that people are aware of their personality characteristics to answer questions about them. Also,
respondents might not always be honest about their responses. They engage in response sets:
tendencies to distort their answers to questions, often in a way that paints them in a positive light.
Correlation Designs:
It examines the extent to which two variables are associated. Correlation ranges from -1.0 to 1.0. It can
either be positive, negative or zero. A positive correlation means that as the value of one variable
changes, the other goes In the same direction. A zero correlation means that the variables don’t go
together at all. A negative correlation means that as the value of one variable changes, the other goes in
the opposite direction. A scatterplot can help us determine results from the variables. Positive
scatterplots show points scattered but mostly moving upwards to the right whereas, negative
scatterplots have dots moving downwards. Zero correlation scatterplots do not move towards any
direction. Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation and a lot of times while interpreting these
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Watching participants" behavior in real-world settings without trying to manipulate their actions. By doing so, we can better understand the range of behaviors displayed by individuals in the real world as well as the situations in which they occur. The major advantage is that they are often high in external validity: the extent that our findings generalize to real-world settings. It is low in internal validity: the extent to which we can draw cause and effect inferences. Researchers examine one person or a small number of people, often over an extended period of time. Some researchers might simply observe, others might administer questionnaires, or take repeated interviews. They are helpful in providing existence proofs: demonstrations that a given psychological phenomenon can occur. They are helpful in studying rare or unusual phenomenon that cannot be recreated in a laboratory such as a brain injury. Finally, case studies can provide insights that researchers can follow up on and test in systematic investigations.
