PSYC 3480 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Statistical Significance, Confounding, Operational Definition
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Formulating the hypothesis researchers are often strongly committed to a certain psychological theory. If this theory is biased against women, then the researchers may expect to find biased results, even before they even begin to conduct their study. A second problem is that psychologists may formulate a hypothesis based on previous research that is unrelated to the topic they want to study. The final way that biases can influence hypothesis formulation concerns the nature of (cid:396)esea(cid:396)(cid:272)he(cid:396)s" (cid:395)uestio(cid:374)s. fo(cid:396) e(cid:454)a(cid:373)ple, (cid:396)esea(cid:396)(cid:272)he(cid:396)s stud(cid:455)i(cid:374)g nati(cid:448)e a(cid:373)e(cid:396)i(cid:272)a(cid:374) women typically examine issues such as alcoholism or suicide (hall & barongan, 2002). If researchers have a biased attitude that these women are somehow deficient, they will not ask questions that can reveal the strengths of these women. An important early step in designing a research study is selecting the operational definitions. An operational definition describes exactly how researchers will measure a variable (or characteristic) in a study. Consider a study investigating gender comparisons in empathy.
