Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Social Desirability Bias, Design Of Experiments, Job Satisfaction

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Dr.Mike

Document Summary

Scientific method the method psychologists use to obtain data and results: identify the method, hypothesis suggests a prediction that will happen between 2 or more events, theory. Good theories generate testable hypotheses, a poor theory is not easily testable. Examples: theory of relativity and behaviour theory are both measurable, therefore testable: design & execute experiment. Identify variables as independent (manipulated) and dependent (measured) Independent causes the dependent variable to change under various conditions. Without proper control, the experiment is confounded and therefore useless: determine the truth . Statistics help determine this: communicate the results. Discuss several related experiments in book chapter: survey research. Surveys study a sample of people that is randomly drawn from the larger. Representative sample reflects the important characteristics of the population population. To obtain a representative sample, researchers use random sampling in which every member of the population has an equal opportunity of being chosen to participate in the survey.