PSY 310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: Stony Brook University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 310
• Professor: chai

Document Summary

Should be a synthetic statement (can be true or false) Operational definitions: definitions of variables in terms of the operations needed to produce them. Extraneous variables: (confounders) have an unintended influence on the results of an experiment by changing the difference between the groups. When an extraneous variable is present, the experiment is confounded. Nuisance variables: unwanted variables that can cause the variability of scores within all groups to increase. Extraneous variables can make an experiment that worked look like it didn"t work, but nuisance variables can"t. Extraneous variables can also make an experiment that didn"t work look like it did work. Nuisance variables will at least be constant, as so extraneous variables are worse for your experiment. Produce groups that are equivalent prior to the introduction of the iv, thereby eliminating extraneous variables. Reduce the effects of nuisance variables as much as possible. Randomization: distributes extraneous variables equally to all groups.