PSYC 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Dependent And Independent Variables, Operational Definition, Central Tendency

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Meredith Chivers

Document Summary

Chapter 2: the ways and means of psychology: 28-55. Set of rules that dictate general procedure to be followed in research; allows us to determine the causes of phenomena. Naturalistic/clinical observations: observation of the behaviour of people/animals in natural environment while undergoing diagnosis or treatment, results often reported in case studies. Experiments: study where researcher changes value of an interdependent variable to see whether the manipulation affects the value of a dependant variable, only experiements can confirm whether a cause-and-effect reationship exists among variables. Correlational studies: examination of relations between two or more measurements of behaviour or other characteristics of people or other animals. Identifying a problem: getting an idea for research. Start with hypotheses theories (states facts, proposes relations among variables, makes new predictions), a good theory generates a testible hypotheses (tested/proved by scientific research) Designing an experiment choose variables to observe/study researchers either maniuplate or measure the variables.