PSYC 379 Lecture 2: Chapter 2 Notes

• School: George Mason University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 379
• Professor: Paraya

Document Summary

Validity: degree to which a finding, measurement, or statistic is accurate and performs its function. Reliability: degree to which a finding, measurement, or statistic is consistent. Presence or absence of contextual factors: contextual factors: any variable that can explain observed cross-cultural differences, enhances the study"s validity and rules out influence of biases and inequivalence. Includes the background characteristics of the participants or their cultures: hypothesis testing studies include contextual variables. Structure versus level oriented: structure-oriented studies: comparison of constructs, structures, or relationships with other constructs, level oriented studies: comparison of mean levels of scores between cultures. Table 2. 2 - example of data from an individual-level study. Table 2. 3 - example of data from an ecological-level study. Getting the right research question: research design starts with a comprehensive knowledge of literature, understanding the need for a study to be conducted leads to questions about how to conduct it, challenges faced by researchers.