PSYCH 127A Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Internal Validity, Confounding, Intelligence Quotient
Document Summary
3 themes: distribution of scores, sampling distribution of mean, test statistic. Pygmalion effect: teacher expectations have a deep influence on student performance. 3 critical lessons: psych research begins w/ observation of human phenomena, samples are used to make inferences about what happens in a population, data are always in some ways inconsistent probability theory sorts out truth. Descriptive: describing what data looks like (mean, mode, median, sd) vs inferential (estimate what"s going on in a large group of subjects) Sample (what we study) vs. population (what we want to learn about) Statistic (computation of sample data, estimate of population) vs. parameter. Independent variable: manipulated by experimenter, affects the dependent variable, free to vary. Confounding variable: extraneous variable, correlates with both dependent and independent var, but doesn"t allow you to say the independent causes the dependent, biases results. Dependent variable: main focus, phenomenon to be studied. Probability: # of outcomes favorable to variable/ total number of outcomes possible.
