PSYC350 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Inter-Rater Reliability, Naturalistic Observation, Social Desirability Bias
25 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
PSYC 350
PSYC 350 Exam 1
• Research Design
o The Scientific Method
o Selecting a Sample
▪ Sample: participants
• Children who are representative of the entire population
• Used to just use white, middle-class kids
▪ Generalization
o Important qualities for data collection strategies
▪ Reliability: extent to which a measure gives consistent results over time
and across observers
• Temporal stability: similar results over time (close together)
• Interrater reliability: similar results across observers, when on the
same person, at the same time
▪ Validity: a measure accurately reflects what you are intending to measure
o Data Collection Strategies
▪ Self report
• Good for measurement of thoughts and feelings
• Structured: questions are exactly the same for everyone
• Semi-structured: questions may vary depending on how you
answer the initial questions
• Advantages: quick, easy, cheap
• Disadvantages: influenced by verbal ability, cannot use it with
young kids, social desirability (answering the way they think
researchers want them to answer)
▪ Parent, teacher, and peer report
• Asking people who know the subject well
• Works much better for behaviors than thoughts or feelings
• Parents are good for assessing sleep patterns, sibling conflict,
homework behavior
• Teachers are good for assessing attentiveness, peer behaviors
• Peers are good for assessing peer rejection, aggressive behaviors
▪ Observation
• Naturalistic observation: in child’s natural environment
o Advantage: ecological validity (if you measure a child’s
behavior in a natural environment, it will accurately reflect
how they act in the world)
o Disadvantage: if behaviors are infrequent or undesirable, it
might be hard to see them; observer influence (kids behave
differently because you’re watching)
• Structured observation: collect data in lab or natural setting, but
every child is put in the same standardized situation
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
PSYC 350
o Advantage: can set up to elicit undesirable or infrequent
behaviors, everyone in the same situation
o Disadvantage: lack of ecological validity
▪ Psychophysiology: measuring physiological responses
• Good way to figure out how kids are feeling without having to ask
them
o Research designs to detect relationships
▪ Correlational design
• Measures strength of association between two variables
• No manipulation, just measuring as it happens
• Both variables must be continuous (not categorical)
• Correlations are between 0 (not related) and ±1 (highly positively
or negatively correlated)
• Correlation ҂ Causation
▪ Experimental design
• Researcher manipulates an aspect of the environment and measures
the effect of that manipulation
• Independent (what’s manipulated) and dependent (affected)
variables
• Confounding variables (something else that is having an effect on
the results)
• Experimental control (making everything else equal) and random
assignment
• Go through examples of how to make a correlational study into an
experimental design
• Some things are unethical, so the only possible way to see a
relationship is through a correlational design
▪ Quasi-Experimental Design
• Measure the impact of a naturally occurring event
• The same as experimental except one variable is categorical and
one is continuous
• Naturally occurring groups (categorical) and a continuous scale
• Cannot imply causality from these designs
o Research designs to study development
▪ Cross-sectional design: groups of kids who are different ages, studied at
the same time
• Advantage: can collect data very quickly
• Disadvantage: cohort effect (usually big age gaps)
• Always quasi-experimental, grouping
▪ Longitudinal design: one group of participants studied repeatedly over
time
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
PSYC 350
• Advantage: can study the stability of a construct (how it holds up
over time), long-term impact
• Disadvantage: expensive and time consuming, practice effects,
selective attrition (not going to get everyone back, and this is not
random), cross-generational problem
• Can be experimental or quasi
▪ Sequential Design
• Kids of 2+ ages at the beginning of the study, and each group is
followed repeatedly throughout time
• Cross-sectional and longitudinal
• Can eliminate cohort effects by comparing cohorts over different
spans of time
• Heredity
o Hereditary Transmission
▪ Chromosomes and genes
• Sperm + egg = zygote (single cell, 23 pairs of chromosomes)
o Half of pair from sperm, other half from egg
▪ Mitosis
• How body cells are formed
o Every body cell contains the 23 pairs of chromosomes
• Process where body cells duplicate by division
o 23 pairs to 46 pairs
o Split apart so there’s now 2 identical cells
• All the cells have identical information
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Psyc 350: many genes determine it, not just one single pair, ex. Interplay between heredity and environment: range-of-reaction principle by gottesman, theory: genetic makeup establishes a range of possible phenotypes, and where you fall within that range depends on the environment (ex. If dishabituation doesn"t occur, then that means the baby could not discriminate: ex. Psyc 350: when a baby goes faster than baseline, it trips a circuit and the baby receives stimulation (ex. See a picture: babies learn, if you give them a couple minutes, that if they suck at the faster rate, the picture will stay, they realize this is something they can control. Attachment trumps novelty: visual perception in infancy, perception of patterns and forms fantz, used preference method with 4-day-old babies. Like a lot of contrast between light and dark. Infants lose ability to discriminate faces from other races .
