Question

Psychology of adulthood and aging;

Here is a question related to adulthood/aging that you think science can’t answer:

Does age determine adulthood?

Then you will try to demonstrate how science could answer a related question. (Change the question to): When should a person be considered an adult?

Objectives:

Students should be able to speculate as to why two variables might be correlated, identify what a correlation between variables is not telling us, and anticipate what kind of research studies could further clarify a correlation between variables.

Students should be able to define operationalization, hypothesis, and be able to describe the scientific method by which psychologists study adulthood and aging.

a-First psychological variable

b-Give it a label

c-Briefly describe this variable.

Describe how this variable can be operationalized (that is, describe exactly how you determine which category or which value of the variable applies to a particular person or situation).

Second variable that you believe is related to your first variable.

a-Give it a label.

b-Briefly describe this variable.

c-Describe how this variable can be operationalized.

Once the variables are defined, the next step is to predict the relationship between these two variables by writing a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a prediction about the relationship between two or more variables. For now, assume that there is a causal relationship between the two variables even if it would be impossible or unethical to test a causal hypothesis. This means that changing a person’s score on one of the variables (the independent variable) would cause the person’s score on the other variable (the dependent variable) to change. For example, you might say, “Increasing the amount of violent television that a person watches will cause that person to exhibit more aggressive behaviors.”