PSY2012 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Central Tendency, Jane Goodall, American Psychological Association
Document Summary
What makes scientific thinking different than everyday observation: objectivity rather than subjectivity, systemic observation & repeatable evidence. Theory: a set of facts and relationships between facts that explain and predict phenomena: observation must be systematic. The scientific method: observe behavior or other phenomena, formulate a research question must be falsifiable, generate a testable prediction (hypothesis) that addresses your question, collect and analyze data, draw conclusions and use them to create/refine theories. Selecting participants for a research study: participants must be volunteers. Naturalistic observation: jane goodall observing the world of the chimpanzee, problem: things act differently when they"re being watched. Case studies: analyzing the case of h. m. (cut corpus callosum in half to stop reoccurring seizures) Surveys: polling a large population, anonymous is more accurate. Correlation: measure of the strength of a relationship between two factors. Correlation coefficient: numerical value that tells the strength, depicted by the letter r . Manipulate one variable and observe changes in others.
