PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Equal Opportunity, Blind Experiment, Statistical Significance

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Rana Pishva

Document Summary

An idea or conceptual model designed to explain existing facts and make predictions about new facts that may be discovered. A testable prediction about processes that can be observed and measured. Scientific method focuses on verifiability and objectivity. Verifiability: can be tested by other people. Objectivity: based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal points of view. Validity: the degree to which a procedure actually measure what it claims to measure. Generalizability: the degree to which one set of results can be applied to other situations, individuals, or events. Used to make subjective phenomena objective; should be clear: eg. Describes a concept by how it is demonstrated in an observable or measurable way. Looks for correlations and causation: between independent and dependent variables. Correlation: a descriptive statistic that describes the relationship between two variables. Independent of other outside variables that may influent an experiment"s outcome. Depends on the manipulations on the independent variable.