PS295 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Belief Perseverance, Attitude Change, Cognitive Dissonance
Document Summary
Theory: an organized set of principles that explain and predict observed events. Hypotheses: a testable prediction about the conditions under which an event will occur. Hypothesis are what gets tested, not theories. Look at overall, natural occurring relationship among variables: experimental approach: Correlations: statistic of relationship: the degree to which scores of x are associated with scores of y, correlations can be positive or negative. Negative: as x increases, y decreases (negative correlations move in opposite directions: correlations can also be strong or weak. Range from-1 to +1: most popular correlation method is surveying the population. Will have to take a sample of population that is representative of characteristics that are found in the population. A random sample maximizes the likelihood that it will be representative. The more representative our sample is, the higher the generalizability. Something that influences that two variables: advantages of correlational research: Can study a wide range of variables from the real world.
