PSY 302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Biomedicine, Pharmacology, Oclc
Document Summary
Variables- something that varies across people: quantitative variable- measureable in numbers, categorical variable- a quality assigned to a category. Operational definition- defined as they will be measured. Population- the large group we want to draw a conclusion about. Sample- the smaller group we actually collect data from: needs to be representative, random sampling, convenience sampling. Might examine the descriptive statistics of one variable. Might look that the relationships among multiple variables: exists when the average score on one differs systematically across levels of the other. Basic relationships: differences between groups (e. g. t-tests) Give mean, standard deviation: correlations (e. g. pearson"s) Directionality problem: a could cause b, b could cause a, c could be related to a & b. Research manipulates the independent variable: eliminates directionality problem, eliminates third variable problem. Expressed in terms of a single variable or a relationship between variables: discussion section of published research. Has it been answered before: literature review.
