PSYC 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Statistical Significance, Dependent And Independent Variables, The Need

• School: University of Virginia
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Christopher Mazurek

Document Summary

Need to have definitions that are acceptable and workable. Making observations of many people in different environments. This is not usually the main method that psychologists use. Lets people respond for themselves to how they are feeling about certain things at that moment. Correlation: a statistical estimate of the relationship between variables. Positive correlation: increases/decreases in one variables are associated with increases/decreases on other (i. e. y=x) 0r>=-1 -- the negative sign just tells you its a negative correlation - if the absolute value of r is high then that means it is a strong correlation. Directionality unclear - it could work both ways or in both direction. Extraneous factors (3rd variables) - something else that explains the relationship.