PSY 240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: External Validity, Statistical Significance, Internal Validity

• School: Stony Brook University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 240
• Professor: Bonita London- Thompson

Document Summary

Lecture #2: developing ideas: beginning the research process, question, theory, hypothesis, from the abstract to the specific, conceptual variables, abstract or general variables, operational definition. States specifically how the conceptual variable will be manipulated or measured. Variables: number indicates the strength of the relationship bet. Variables: correlations: positive, negative, and none, positive correlation. Points are as close to the line as possible, relationship is very strong, going up: negative correlation, as one variable goes up, the other one goes down (opposite directions, no correlation. 1: correlation is not causation, explaining correlations: three possibilities, experiments: looking for cause and effect, two essential characteristics of experiments, researcher controls procedures and variables. Participants are randomly assigned to the conditions of the experiment: random sampling vs. random assignment, random assignment, how participants are assigned to different conditions, each participant has an equal chance of being in each.